“I feel like if you feel safer wearing it, then you should continue to wear it, but if you don’t want to, you shouldn’t have to,” said Natalie Koteles, who is vaccinated and works for an accounting firm in downtown Chicago.

Ms. Koteles said the application of mask rules felt arbitrary at times, even silly. She had to wear a face covering while walking into her workplace, but not while at her desk. They are required when entering restaurants, but not while eating. “The rules are totally inconsistent,” she said.

For others, though, the change seemed jarring, premature, dangerous. How had we gone in just weeks from a fearsome Omicron surge and added cautions to a quick retreat? And what about immunocompromised people who might not be well protected by vaccines, or the youngest children who are still not eligible for shots?

“They seem to not grasp the gravity of what Covid can do to our family,” said Stephanie Madole, whose school-age daughters in Redding, Calif., are immunocompromised.