[Michael Rankin]

Jenny,

I’m glad you proposed this forum. I’m hoping that my contribution is taken as one that has worked for me and that I’m not endorsing non-masking….only sharing my approach in the case that anybody sees the rationale.

I live in an area of Florida where I never saw a soul wear a mask from day one. In fact, our area caught the attention of the entire Southeast as an area to go to that wasn’t locked down and didn’t have tough mask mandates.

I was diagnosed with CF at 18mos and I’m now 53; married and have two wonderful, biological daughters due to gains in in vitro reproductive medicine.

I never wore a mask outside of mandated airline travel and I’m happy to report that I never got Covid. I looked at it as an exercise in futility being that I have two daughters in travel sports that either practiced or play away games all throughout Covid case amplifications. I could’ve done everything right and still caught it just by touching the staircase handrails in my own house.

I chose instead to interact with microbes, bacteria, viruses. I knew I was taking chances but chose other ways to stay at the top of my game: daily workouts; solid diet (including only one drink when I went out with friends to any one of our 5 live music venues that never shut down); and plenty of vitamins C and D.

I tore my shoulder at the gym in September of 2020 and was told by the surgeons that that wouldn’t do the rotator surgery on me because I was an anesthesia risk. We struck a deal where I agreed to quarantine for 2 weeks in exchange for the surgery….and I complied 100% with that order. I moved into the guest house and stopped going to the gym.

I will tell you that my health fell apart during that 2 week quarantine. I accomplished a lot of binge watching but health fell quickly. I never denied the horrible effects of Covid as I was routinely sick for 7-10 days with the regular flu when I was younger.

I just feel that the withdrawal from a healthy lifestyle wasn’t worth the tradeoff to avoid the flu. Our entire area of the Florida Panhandle has been accused of not believing that Covid exists. That statement couldn’t be further from truth. The rest of world just loves to use the nomenclature of “Redneck Riviera” and lament that we aren’t educated or conventional. Actually, my viewpoint, and that of all of my friends/peers/neighbors is one of

“That virus is everywhere, and you are never going to outrun it…so why try so hard?”