[colordrops]

I'm glad we are finally at a point where that skepticism around strict covid policies, such as in this thread, can be expressed without being immediately attacked. Questioning anything 6 months ago would have gotten you shut down or banned, depending on the forum.

[iaHN]

I don't know about that. I received some negative comments recently for asking for evidence that wearing a mask, while outdoors, while socially distanced was ever effective.

People still have their egos and identities attached to this, seeing disagreement as a personal or political attack.

[samatman]

Well, it wasn't.

It's going to take awhile for people to go through all the stages of grief about how ineffective and intrusive many of the state interventions during this pandemic really were.

Judging by the number of young, healthy, vaccinated people I still see outdoors in masks, it's still denial for a lot of them.

[codezero]

What's the downside for those people who choose to wear a mask outdoors?

Perhaps they just came from somewhere indoors and want to have an extra barrier to protect them from unconsciously touching their face.

The reason doesn't really matter.

[ryandrake]

Come on. Every COVID-related thread throughout the last year here has been absolutely crawling with deniers, misinformation, conspiracy theories, rants about freedom, anti-vaxism, you name it--basically everything that you wrap up in that "skepticism" euphemism. I can tell you how trying to combat all this garbage has been: Both sides got the roller-coaster of up and down votes. It's just absurdly politically charged.

In this case, the authorities clearly acknowledging the difficulty for businesses, looking for tradeoffs, trying to keep them open while making compromises to at least reduce the risk. But no... Even that's not enough! Everything is black-and-white now: You either have zero restrictions or it's authoritarian overreach.

[colordrops]

You are proving my point. You have no idea what my views are or what I'm skeptical about, if anything. You just emotionally oppose skepticism of any sort, rational or not.

Just because there are a bunch of unhinged people with crazy ideas doesn't mean all skepticism or discussion around an extremely complex topic is unwarranted or irrational.