[thu2111]

You could of course describe it the other way around.

The population starts out hating mask wearing - don't see many people volunteering for that in America before 2020. And then it was labelled as "caring" and "protecting others" and despite vast piles of evidence indicating it achieves nothing, half the country is immediately influenced into hating non-mask-wearing.

[stouset]

I think you misspoke. Masks have a clear, demonstrable, and scientifically-validated benefit. Not for the wearer, but for those who come in contact with the wearer.

[dionian]

I'm pro-mask personally... but the experts told us not to worry about masks as early as 3 months ago. I was pro-mask back then too. My point is, "the science" is not always so clear.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/health/2020/07/03/us-surgeon-...

[stouset]

And the reason for that is a something they've owned up to and apologized for.

3 months ago was ages given the recency of this catastrophe. And what we learned is that while masks don't help the wearer, they do help everyone around the wearer. Most of the medical profession wasn't operating from the current understanding we have about symptomless spread. As that became a dramatically more clear concern here, the scientific establishment quickly pivoted to pushing mask-wearking hard.

Isn't that exactly the kind of behavior you'd like to see?

[chrisco255]

Do you have the data on asymptomatic transmission? Because I've seen conflicting reports on that.

[rsynnott]

There's some question on asymptomatic transmission. That's important from an epidemiological point of view, but irrelevant to you as an individual deciding whether to wear a mask, because at any given time it is generally impossible to know whether you're asymptomatic, _presymptomatic_, or negative. And presymptomatic infection is definitely common.

[BryanBigs]

Well, it's pretty easy to know if you are in the 4th category. Recovered. Should someone that's been infected and recovered from COVID have to wear a mask?

[thu2111]

I think you have been misled. The sudden benefits of masks is a fiction invented out of whole cloth just weeks ago.

Here's what the US CDC was saying about masks before COVID:

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza

The idea that anything about this topic is clear or demonstrable is ridiculous. Masks are an ideological issue by the left, which is why my entirely reasonable post has been so aggressively downvoted.