Even from day one we've had people refusing to mask/sanitize/social distance, claiming it "violates their freedom".
Since this article is about children, there is a lot of evidence to show that kids are experiencing developmental delays that are likely correlated with masking. The long term effects of which is not yet well understood. I would much rather live in a country that challenges assumptions and fosters debate, instead of blindly pursuing countermeasures that may have extremely detrimental outcomes in the future.
KISS, We have kept it simple. There is no discussion about when to wear or not wear, who need to wear or not, what type of mask to wear or not.
At the beginning of pandemic, gov sends cloth mask all house. I think this was good try at the time, but finally the mask isn't used well because non-woven mask become available soon. Now gov still has huge cloth mask stocks.
After that, some research suggests that nonwoven mask is the best for protect, cloth mask isn't the best, urethane mask is relatively bad. But because the gov sends and still has cloth mask, gov don't want to say avoid using other than nonwoven masks.
Anyway over 80% (I assume) of people wear non woven mask so totally fine.