Interesting how the public opinion on this turned around as the virus spread. I wonder if this will lead to people in the west wearing surgical masks during flu season like people do in Asia.
A surgical mask is just a simpler cheaper, less complete and less effective mask than an N95 mask, used in lower risk situations or when N95 is desired but not available.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/UnderstandDifferenceInf...
The WHO and CDC have been pushing that line as well. Studies linked to in the above article suggest that even home made masks provide some protection to healthy individuals. But even if they didn't, getting everyone to wear them would be extremely valuable for stopping the spread coming from people who don't know they have the disease. Also, "Don't come in hear unless you have something covering your face" is an easy rule for establishments to enforce, whereas "If you have Coronavirus you need to cover your face" is impossible to enforce.
Yet I've seen almost no leadership at any level in the U.S. pushing this (and this seems to be true in much of the West). Lockdowns buy us time, and we seem to be wasting that.
Normalizing masks will also help fight facial recognition. IIRC, the Chinese systems have trouble with people who are wearing a surgical mask and sunglasses. No attention-grabbing dazzle makeup required.
It sucks that we even need to think about wearing masks to escape facial recognition.
That's overly fatalistic. China hasn't banned them for that reason, and they're way more interested in that rationale than any government you're likely talking about.
> It sucks that we even need to think about wearing masks to escape facial recognition.
Avoiding facial recognition isn't just about avoiding the government facial recognition.
It's been illegal in New York since 1845, due to some kind of violent conflict between landlords and tenant farmers. Some laws were targeted at the KKK, and newer laws were targeted at Occupy and Anonymous folks wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
This article[2] has a more complete list of state laws against masks, and where they've been overturned.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_law#United_States
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-states-where-prote...
The government did this long ago, as a reaction to the KKK wearing masks to intimidate their victims and hide their identity.
So it's actually already against the law to wear masks in public in many places in the US.
I've never heard of this law being enforced in modern times, however.
I challenge you to find an example of a blanket ban on all masks, that doesn't rely on other factors like threatening violence, rallying, intent to hide identity, or a respresenting specific gang design/color.
Otherwise you will be marginalized and the masses will be "educated" by the mass media about how evil and troublesome "you people are."
Ensuring diversity in information dissemination is absolutely key to shooting down these proposals which harm personal freedom.