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Mask mandates are not about protecting you, they are about limiting the spread throughout the population. You may have even had it with no symptoms and gave it to someone else, and the spread in the population as a whole is the threat.
I haven’t seen a trend towards people caring about hygiene around the midwest.
I am mostly referring to the shift here in voluntary masking, but yes, Midwest would be a bit different. When the mandate ended here, people continued to mask up if they (1) are at risk, (2) feel a little ill, (3) just felt like it. If I tried to mask up in 2018, I’d get weird looks!
And yeah, hand washing picked up, too, although not sure if it kept up. One perk of living in a blue area of a blue state in any case.
I’m not sure if there will be any more mandates because of masking fatigue, but the science does say that one way masking is still effective.