Jon Stewart is never going to read this. But I’m writing it anyway.

In December, the comedian and “The Daily Show” host made what he thought was a funny joke about how weird it is that people are still out in these post-lockdown streets wearing masks. “You always say, ‘Oh, are you sick?’” Stewart told podcast guest Tim Miller. “And they go, ‘Uh, I don’t want to talk about it.’”

That’s grossly dismissive of the reality of trying to prevent COVID, a very bad current flu season and the ever-present reality of people living with chronic disease and disabilities. Also, it’s just not your business.

Again, I know Stewart has no clue who I am, but on Threads I wrote: “So sir if you see this: I mask because I don’t want to be sick. Because I have loved ones who are high risk. Because it costs nothing to remember that disease happens and I don’t want to get or spread it because I care about people.”

The responses I got from Maryland-area parents, teachers, activists and others tell me I’m not the only person shouting into the void. It might be hard to hear through our masks. So we’ll have to shout louder.

“Unfortunately, in too many medical appointments I’ve had medical assistants, nurses and even doctors who have said. ‘You don’t need to wear that currently,’ which is so disappointing,” said Melinda Lipscomb, an advocate for the disabled for the last decade, and herself bed-bound with severe myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndome or ME/CFS, a complex disease that can be triggered by infection.

“First, they should never dissuade personal masking, and second, masks should really be a staple, just as hand sanitizer is, for medical facilities,” continued Lipscomb, who has been masking during flu and virus season since 2010’s H1N1 epidemic, formerly known as swine flu.

She’s not alone. Some, like myself, never stopped masking indoors in most situations, and others who have are pulling them back out of drawers or ordering them anew because of this year’s horrible flu season.

“I break mine out anytime I have to leave my office, and my door stays closed,” Courtney Boyd, who lives in White Marsh, wrote in a message. “I had a lady approach me in the market yesterday to say she was glad to see me masking up. And that her daughter told her she needed to start again, too, but she keeps forgetting. I told them to keep them in her car.”

In late December, the University of Maryland Medical System announced that it was requiring those visiting patients to mask. Employees like Lauren Seserko of Baltimore, who works at the University of Maryland Rehabilitation and Orthopaedic Institute, said that facility started a masking mandate around the Christmas holidays, and even before that, “I’ve just seen more practitioners masking as flu season ramped up prior to the mandate.”

Other people in front-facing professions, like education, have returned to masking as well. Alysia D.P. Malmstrom of Odenton began substitute teaching in 2024, and planned to cover up this week when she returned to the classroom.

“I mask when I’m worried I might be sick now,” she wrote. “Why get sick, if we can take an easy precaution to limit our exposure?”

That’s why I do it. I never stopped wearing a mask in The Baltimore Banner newsroom, at grocery stores, on public transportation, at concerts and performances, church or anywhere people were going to breathe on me or I could breathe on them.

The first time I tested positive for COVID, I was quarantined in Oregon for seven days until the Department of Health said I could fly home, which happened to be the day after the government discontinued mask mandates. I masked on the plane, officially no longer contagious but still testing positive, catching the weirdest looks from newly barefaced travelers. I wanted to yell, “I’m trying to protect you!”

Even with my vigilance, I admit that I had begun to slack off in restaurants or when running into Royal Farms for a quick diet soda, counting on a squirt of fancy nasal spray and sitting in corners to keep me and others safe. But the current sick season inspired me to buy a new batch of KN95 masks and slap one on again, no matter the looks I get.

“I’ve had other fools snapping pictures [of me] in the past like they couldn’t believe it,” Boyd wrote. “Weirdos.”

Masking is not common like it used to be, and masks themselves are not as available as they were in 2020 or 2021, when you could walk into a store and see them displayed at the entrance. Lipscomb recommends N95 or KN94/95 masks, or specifically the 3M Aura or Bona Fide masks.

I think that some people react badly to others’ masks because they remind them of the bad old days of lockdown, or that they seem performative or cowardly. I have decided that it’s really no one’s business why anyone else covers their face, and that it must be for a good reason.

A reason, Jon Stewart, that you don’t need to get.