Covid Cautions Continue for Some, Even as Federal Emergency Ends

For millions of Americans, the Covid-19 emergency, that disorienting stretch of lockdowns, mandates, free-floating anxiety and exhaustion came to a muted end sometime during the past couple of years, brought about by vaccines and antiviral drugs.

The expiration of the federal public health emergency on Thursday was a barely noticed formality.

But signs remain everywhere of a changed country: in the many thousands of families quietly grieving a loss, in the struggles of those suffering from long Covid and in the continued reliance by many Americans on one of the pandemic’s most hotly debated tools: the humble mask.

“This is my new norm,” said Nicole Uhing, 38, who was masked and shelving books at a branch of the Des Moines Public Library. Ms. Uhing, who said wearing a mask made her more comfortable in her workplace, was unmoved by the government’s decision. “It doesn’t seem like Covid is going to go away. It keeps changing and evolving.”

In interviews around the country on Thursday, most people took in the news about the government’s decision with neither relief nor alarm, but with a sense of resignation. Many described being newly attuned to lurking risks to public health, and also to ways in which they could defend against these risks, often with the help of the government. Now, they were largely on their own.

“It’s not over, I know people who have the virus now,” said Maria Paula, 52, a home attendant who lives in Brooklyn. “I’m tired of mask wearing,” she said. “But the virus is here, it continues here.”

Ms. Paula is among those who, like a majority of the respondents in a survey conducted in mid-March by Monmouth University, believe that the pandemic is not over and might never be over. In that same poll, around half of respondents reported wearing a mask when out in public at least some of the time, and about 20 percent said they wore one most or all of the time.