I'm actually not mask averse! I wear a mask all the time. I'm just interested and unsettled by what seems to be a pervasive, immediate, visceral moral reaction that fits all to well into the moral superiority and virtue signalling zeitgeist.
That reaction to seeing someone without a mask is not an analytical judgement based in evidence - almost no one who feels this way is reading the literature or following the inconsistent scientific position of the effectiveness of mask wearing that's changed 180deg seemingly overnight. They're making moral judgments.
I've seen enough people saying frankly "it's about showing you care."
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pn...
CDC #'s 2015-2016
Flu: 7,961
Pneumonia: 131,858
All: 1,769,940
The only real measure is excess deaths.
1. https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1280250042603929604
A month ago, Florida had 66,000 confirmed cases. Now it has over 200,000. With a virus take takes two to eight weeks (or more) to kill, we haven't even begun to see the real death rate.
.. side note, 20452 confirmed cases per million residents of Miami-Dade. 2% of the population, geez.
In just the past couple of months, COVID-19 has racked up a body count of 130,000 dead Americans. For perspective, that's forty-five 9/11s worth of dead people. Asking people to wear a mask in public to curtail the spread saves lives. This has nothing to do with "desiring moral condemnation." The "mask adverse" can likely bear the burden of at least 1/45 of the deaths America has had compared to it's less "mask adverse" peers.
I absolutely hate wearing a mask, I'm "mask adverse" like yourself, but I wear one since this is a trolley problem where pulling the lever means I have to be uncomfortable for a few hours.