So you're saying you didn't pay any attention to the actual information and instead cherry-picked what you wanted to hear in order to get out of wearing a mask? You DO realize that the whole reason the number of cases of flu dropped dramatically (but has been rising again) is specifically because so many people were wearing masks and preventing the spread of the flu and other illnesses? The problem is that people like you continue to deny covid is a problem until you are the one who is lying in a hospital bed dying. No that's not an exaggeration, I saw a ton of this happening in 2020-2021. The county next to me (which I live only a few miles from the edge of) actually passed laws circumventing the state laws about mask wearing... The result was that they had so many people sick and dying that they were overflowing into OUR hospitals (which had a lot of free beds due to most of us actually following the masking laws). And despite so many of them dying, they STILL held protests every weekend complaining about the masking laws.

Tell me you're living in a state of denial without telling me you're living in a state of denial.