[BoxOfRain]

The desire to get rid of masks is mostly iconoclastic in my opinion. People come up with all sorts of hand-wringing explanations for the anti-mask phenomenon but it's actually pretty simple in my opinion, people want rid of their masks for the same reason English people burn effigies of Guy Fawkes on the 5th of November. It's not the masks themselves that make people dislike them, it's what they represent. To some they're primarily a symbol of caring about your neighbours, to others they're primarily a symbol of government authoritarianism. It's this subjective, symbolic association that I think informs most people's opinions of masks.

I suspect the Venn diagram of people who don't like masks and people who don't like coercively collectivist politics is basically a circle. It certainly is here in the UK, most opposition to masks in Parliament came from the Tory backbenchers which I guess is why their mandatory use was dropped this month; the 1922 Committee (a formal group of Tory backbenchers) can force a vote of no confidence in the Tory leader if 15% of them call for such a vote. Tory backbenchers tend to be more small-c conservative than the Tory frontbench, they're not necessarily anti-authoritarian but they're often anti-collectivist.

[packetlost]

I, for one, hate wearing masks. I do it if I'm required or am sick and not otherwise. In the winter glasses + hat + longer hair make it really difficult to get a mask on-off (not to mention extra fogging up glasses, which can be dangerous in some situations) and in the hot summers it quickly can cause overheating. It's also so depressing to not see people's faces outside of a small familial or maybe social bubble.

Not everything is politically motivated.