I dunno, hearing some of the reasons people were giving for not wearing them, I think many resisting adults just needed to get a bloody grip. Though in most cases I suspect the resistance to masks wasn’t really about the masks.
Not saying there weren’t any justifiable reasons but I think a lot of people were rather over egging it.
My opinions on masks have evolved partly with the state of research and partly with reflection on what the Government and other bodies advised at different points in time.
I agree that some people were likely motivated by selfishness at some points, and that many people’s pro-social instincts made them support a culture of mask-wearing (especially given the argument that wearing a mask was more likely to work in the direction of protecting others as opposed to purely being a self-preservation measure).
I suspected at the time that when masks became generally recommended that it was a measure to stimulate economic activity more than anything else. Now I think it was also because masks were a visible marker of who was following the “correct messaging”, combined with a hope that perhaps they had some small effect.
I was never convinced that masks were a very effective measure (certainly not when compared to social distancing), but until recently my opinion was that they did
something to affect transmission chances. The best evidence we now have, with a large amount of high-quality data, is that there is no reason to believe they do anything at all (I struggle a bit with the counter-intuitive nature of this, but I personally would feel my integrity was compromised if I didn’t follow the evidence).
Also, the most recent data is more supportive of the effect of regular hand-washing than previous assessments (and my personal expectations).
There will be more results of meta-analyses and further studies, but I think what we are likely to find out about quite a few aspects of this pandemic are likely to severely damage trust in science and scientists for a long time.
For example, I think my initial assessments about vaccines were coloured by what I wanted to believe combined with too much trust in the breadth of data being collected by the Pharma companies in charge of testing them.
They turned out to be very effective, but I also think we are liable to see that some downsides were understated. Most posters here are mature enough to know that nothing comes with zero risk obv.
I don’t think this post is going to be popular but I hope at least it’s recognised as being honest and in good faith.
) but other thoughts are whether different types of contact were recorded, eg brief passing contacts (under 15 minutes) compared to much longer contacts, and contacts where masks would have been taken off and on intermittently.
