> My friend, if you expect immediate inerrancy from everyone dealing with global-scale novel viruses, then I think you'll find that you'll _always_ be disappointed (or, more likely given your 1984 reference, you'll _always_ be the "victim" of another imagined conspiracy).
When public policy is based on it, people are threatened with jail, forceably removed from outdoor open-air sporting events and denied basic services, yeah - you sure as hell better not be wrong about it.
When people in the street yell at you and call you a murderer for not wearing a mask outside in the sunshine (this happened to me) - yeah, you don't get to go back later and say "oops, my bad".
When the government exercises extraordinary emergency powers by executive fiat without legislative support to impose masking rules - they had better have damned good science to back it up.
In this case, the science simply didn't exist.
It's a strawman argument to claim "numerous studies show effectiveness of masking" as I've seen several people argue in this discussion.
The only relevant studies are those that evaluate the effectiveness of universal masking, since that's what the public policy dictated.
Universal masking policy was a knee-jerk response to some early studies and models that over estimated the risk of asymptomatic transmission. However, regardless of the new science that demonstrated that asymptomatic transmission was incredibly rare, the authorities refused to change the guidance.
Where was the science that justified the arbitrary and utterly performative rules put in place for restaurants? (wear a mask to walk three meters from the front door to the table, but it's ok to take it off when you're at the table)
Or the painfully performative masking of news people, in a studio by themselves, wearing a mask. Or wearing a mask alone in a car. Or on a walk outside. Or on a video conference for work.
Masks quickly stopped being about science very early on and quickly became nothing more than a flag for showing political alliance with the utter nonscientific nonsense of cloth masks and the overnight development of "fashion masks".
Forcing this on children was especially painful to watch. Children, who will never follow proper masking protocols and who are happy to trade their batman mask for their friend's spiderman mask...
> do hope your friends, family, and coworkers afford you more space to learn, grow, and change (and that you practice doing so!) than you afford to others.
I do hope that this entire episode and the bumbling, unscientific, incoherent and political face-saving response from the government makes you take a second look at blanket, authoritarian policy in the future.
Universal masking was the public health equivalent of the TSA. Illusory safety at best, with very little demonstrable effectiveness to justify the intrusion and restrictions put in place.