I agree that governments should back off from trying to micromanage the lives of adults.
However, I’ll personally continue to use high-quality masks in crowded situations indefinitely, because I would rather wear a mask than get any cold or flu. If you went back in time and told last-year-me that there was a single magic garment which I could wear to prevent all plane plagues, con cruds, office coughs, and myriad other droplet-borne ailments, and you’d shown me evidence of its effectiveness as compelling as what I’ve personally observed by avoiding the respiratory droplets emitted by strangers for the past year, past-me would have jumped at the opportunity just as enthusiastically as present-me does now.
While I’m not against this policy (I’m Chinese American and already sometimes wore surgical masks when sick), I expect your experience of the past year has given you a falsely inflated sense of the efficacy of masks. Yes, they definitely help prevent you from contracting airborne diseases, but a large part of the reduction in infectious disease transmission risk this year was due to the full battery of COVID restrictions, rather than just your own mask use. Like, flu rates were very low[1] because people were very isolated from one another, and so in any given crowded place, you’d be much less likely to encounter anyone who had the flu at all (plus of course, anyone infected would likely be wearing a mask). As things go more back to normal I’d be surprised if just wearing a mask allowed you to avoid getting sick all year, every year. But I guess it depends on the mask and how reliably you wear it?
[1] Flu deaths in the US dropped from ~30,000 in the two previous seasons, to 600 in the most recent season! (source)
I agree that last year was an uncharacteristic sample of day-to-day cold/flu prevention from masks due to the lower prevalence of other peoples’ droplets. I failed to mention that my opinion of mask efficacy is also influenced by having spent a lot of time traveling, and observing a correlation between wearing a cloth mask on planes and getting sick after flying less frequently/severely. If good masking under normal germ-laden droplet loads once those return causes me to experience comparable cold and flu levels to what I had without masks, I’ll need to revise my opinions, but I think even halving cold and flu frequency, duration, or severity from their prior levels would be worth the hassle.
I consider cold and flu prevention to be as much an accidental side effect of diligent mask use as it is a direct benefit. Side effects of using a mask in the way that I consider “correct” include never touching my mouth or nose after touching shared surfaces, and only eating in settings where I only touch clean/non-shared surfaces between cleaning my hands and touching my food. For instance, without respiratory droplet precautions, I might order a plate of tacos at a sit-down restaurant, get up and wash my hands at the restaurant’s bathroom, touch the grimy back of my chair as I sit back down, and then put my hands (now featuring the germs of everyone else who’s touched that chair today) straight onto my food. With respiratory droplet precautions, I’d order my tacos to go, take them to a park, wash my hands or use hand sanitizer, and then put my clean hands onto my food to eat it. I think the little details like that which happen to result from droplet precautions probably make just as much difference as the mask itself.
I do not see that adults are being micromanaged by my government. I see my government doing thier best to reduce deaths and keep the hospitals from being overwhlemed. Unfortunately their best is not good enough for the thousands who have died in my city and they do need to do more if they hope to prevent further deaths.
Did it fund studies about whether it makes sense for the average person to use their hands when to readjust masks when it seems it doesn’t fit or did it just tell them not to touch their masks when they have them on?
Did it fund studies on all the drugs that the top Coronaexperts find promising? Did it generally give top Coronaexperts from before the pandemic a lot of say in the government response or did it prefer career burocrats to have the power?
Did it pay a price for vaccines that’s corresponding to the value of the vaccine per dose if the dose gets delievered early to encourage fast vaccine production?
Did it tell people from the beginning to ventilate and meet outside instead of meeting people inside?
Did it forbid people from vaccinating with established technology before phase 3 trials ended? Did it immediately approve the vaccines.
Did it fund studies of Taffix to see whether giving it to people to reduce spread of COVID-19 make sense?
Did it science-based recommendations about gloves (gloves increase risk of spreading COVID-19 in many situations) or just recommended people to wear them?
Did it provide incentives for people to install an app for contact tracking?
Did it encourage people to install air filters? How much money did it spend to encourage the production of air filters and people installing them?
Did it recommend that people don’t press buttons like elevator buttons with their hands and instead with other objects with little surface?
Did it let all people who died from Corona get autopsies like you would have done 40 years ago to understand as much as possible about how COVID-19 kills people (Germany for example didn’t do that)?
Did it fund controlled trials to understand long COVID risks (or fund a vaccine trial to also look at long COVID)?
Does it have social distancing policies that incentivise people to meet outside or inside (if the rules are the same for both and it’s easier to avoid detection of rule breaking if you are inside you incentivise that people meet inside)?
Did the government at any point say that masks don’t work for non-medical personal?
Did it stock enough masks before 2000?
Did it pay a price for masks afterwards that was corresponding to the value provided by masks to aquire them as fast as possible and scale up production?
Does the government fund free fit testing say that people can easily learn how to wear their mask correctly?
Did it fund apps to help people diagnose whether they have COVID-19?
Did it provide people easy way to isolate in a hotel to not infect people they are living with or did they simply outlaw hotels from renting out rooms?
I agree that governments should back off from trying to micromanage the lives of adults.
However, I’ll personally continue to use high-quality masks in crowded situations indefinitely, because I would rather wear a mask than get any cold or flu. If you went back in time and told last-year-me that there was a single magic garment which I could wear to prevent all plane plagues, con cruds, office coughs, and myriad other droplet-borne ailments, and you’d shown me evidence of its effectiveness as compelling as what I’ve personally observed by avoiding the respiratory droplets emitted by strangers for the past year, past-me would have jumped at the opportunity just as enthusiastically as present-me does now.
While I’m not against this policy (I’m Chinese American and already sometimes wore surgical masks when sick), I expect your experience of the past year has given you a falsely inflated sense of the efficacy of masks. Yes, they definitely help prevent you from contracting airborne diseases, but a large part of the reduction in infectious disease transmission risk this year was due to the full battery of COVID restrictions, rather than just your own mask use. Like, flu rates were very low[1] because people were very isolated from one another, and so in any given crowded place, you’d be much less likely to encounter anyone who had the flu at all (plus of course, anyone infected would likely be wearing a mask). As things go more back to normal I’d be surprised if just wearing a mask allowed you to avoid getting sick all year, every year. But I guess it depends on the mask and how reliably you wear it?
[1] Flu deaths in the US dropped from ~30,000 in the two previous seasons, to 600 in the most recent season! (source)
I agree that last year was an uncharacteristic sample of day-to-day cold/flu prevention from masks due to the lower prevalence of other peoples’ droplets. I failed to mention that my opinion of mask efficacy is also influenced by having spent a lot of time traveling, and observing a correlation between wearing a cloth mask on planes and getting sick after flying less frequently/severely. If good masking under normal germ-laden droplet loads once those return causes me to experience comparable cold and flu levels to what I had without masks, I’ll need to revise my opinions, but I think even halving cold and flu frequency, duration, or severity from their prior levels would be worth the hassle.
I consider cold and flu prevention to be as much an accidental side effect of diligent mask use as it is a direct benefit. Side effects of using a mask in the way that I consider “correct” include never touching my mouth or nose after touching shared surfaces, and only eating in settings where I only touch clean/non-shared surfaces between cleaning my hands and touching my food. For instance, without respiratory droplet precautions, I might order a plate of tacos at a sit-down restaurant, get up and wash my hands at the restaurant’s bathroom, touch the grimy back of my chair as I sit back down, and then put my hands (now featuring the germs of everyone else who’s touched that chair today) straight onto my food. With respiratory droplet precautions, I’d order my tacos to go, take them to a park, wash my hands or use hand sanitizer, and then put my clean hands onto my food to eat it. I think the little details like that which happen to result from droplet precautions probably make just as much difference as the mask itself.
I do not see that adults are being micromanaged by my government. I see my government doing thier best to reduce deaths and keep the hospitals from being overwhlemed. Unfortunately their best is not good enough for the thousands who have died in my city and they do need to do more if they hope to prevent further deaths.
Which government are you talking about?
Did it fund studies about whether it makes sense for the average person to use their hands when to readjust masks when it seems it doesn’t fit or did it just tell them not to touch their masks when they have them on?
Did it fund studies on all the drugs that the top Coronaexperts find promising? Did it generally give top Coronaexperts from before the pandemic a lot of say in the government response or did it prefer career burocrats to have the power?
Did it pay a price for vaccines that’s corresponding to the value of the vaccine per dose if the dose gets delievered early to encourage fast vaccine production?
Did it tell people from the beginning to ventilate and meet outside instead of meeting people inside?
Did it forbid people from vaccinating with established technology before phase 3 trials ended? Did it immediately approve the vaccines.
Did it fund studies of Taffix to see whether giving it to people to reduce spread of COVID-19 make sense?
Did it science-based recommendations about gloves (gloves increase risk of spreading COVID-19 in many situations) or just recommended people to wear them?
Did it provide incentives for people to install an app for contact tracking?
Did it encourage people to install air filters? How much money did it spend to encourage the production of air filters and people installing them?
Did it recommend that people don’t press buttons like elevator buttons with their hands and instead with other objects with little surface?
Did it let all people who died from Corona get autopsies like you would have done 40 years ago to understand as much as possible about how COVID-19 kills people (Germany for example didn’t do that)?
Did it fund controlled trials to understand long COVID risks (or fund a vaccine trial to also look at long COVID)?
Does it have social distancing policies that incentivise people to meet outside or inside (if the rules are the same for both and it’s easier to avoid detection of rule breaking if you are inside you incentivise that people meet inside)?
Did the government at any point say that masks don’t work for non-medical personal?
Did it stock enough masks before 2000?
Did it pay a price for masks afterwards that was corresponding to the value provided by masks to aquire them as fast as possible and scale up production?
Does the government fund free fit testing say that people can easily learn how to wear their mask correctly?
Did it fund apps to help people diagnose whether they have COVID-19?
Did it provide people easy way to isolate in a hotel to not infect people they are living with or did they simply outlaw hotels from renting out rooms?
I agree. Since I have been using mask, I have rarely caught cold.