Literally any time I get confronted for wearing a mask I just tell people (while slipping in small clearing of throat sounds) that I am currently positive for COVID, but we can’t live in fear any more so I’m just trying to infect as few people as possible while getting back to normal.

As soon as they start freaking out at you because they now are able to conceptualize a hypothetical because it involves them personally, start repeating their disingenuous questions with the same tone that insinuates that they’re a hypochondriac like “What are you so worried about? It’s way less serious now.” etc (it will 100% actually make them madder because now the hypothetical person whose safety is being dismissed is them) and once they’re pissed about it you can start shaming them for their anger and ask why the fuck they mask shame people trying to make (literally any, even if only token) effort to protect themselves and others if they’re so fucking mad about it when it personally involves them.

I bounce between that and making extremely belittling jokes about 9/11 (it helps that I’m a non American in America) only to completely dismiss their indignation and tone policing afterward by comparing the months where we losing more people per day than 9/11 because dipshits like them were too selfish to literally sit on their fucking hands and wait for the situation to slowly be brought back into control instead of making it worse, and asking why they can dismiss dozens of 9/11s and I can’t dismiss the ONE that convinced them all to go a on a 20 year mass murder spree.

So I guess tl;dr: extreme hostility.