The appeal of masks for me is definitely to lower spread. Yes there is signaling, but also because masks reduce amount of possibly covid-infected droplets expelled from the mouth and nose while breathing and speaking.
It is not possible to have a 6 foot bubble around everybody at all times. It is possible to always wear a mask.
This is not moralizing, this is science.
2) Masks are much less effective for aerosols than for droplet transmission. I think the consensus is they at least somewhat reduce aerosol transmission. Only n95 w/o exhale vents that are properly worn are believed to be good at reducing aerosol transmission.
The fact that your glasses fog up shows that surgical masks certainly are very leaky.
People seem to always assume/project the other party is controlled by high levels of anxiety around using masks when in reality I see most people know that distancing/masks are a risk mitigation technique (NOT a one-stop-fix, but a risk mitigation) used to bring virus spread rate down and flatten the curve. Instead of being an emotionally charged subject, I think most people see distancing/masks as a tool to reduce the spread of the virus so that we can go out more often as opposed to taking no mitigations and contributing to exponential rates of virus spread.
With this perspective, I think feeling violated by people avoiding masks is a healthy, normal response. It's not about feeling anxious for going outside, but that we have been violated by people spreading the virus to others causing us to have to extend the lockdown and keep our economy dead in order to not over-burden the hospitals.
it’s important to dig into these nuances to dispel the anxiety and fear we have against each other (like feeling violated). and lockdowns (in the US at least) are political theater, accruing benefit to a few and wreaking discriminate havoc on the many. the mediopolitical apparatus deserves that blame, not the vilified ‘other’.
Masks are one additional piece—and truly one of the easiest measures—to reduce overall exposure. It’s been well established that even basic masks significantly reduce the amount of aerosols emitted as we talk, so when I’m in a grocery store surrounded by others, I do feel unsafe if people aren’t wearing masks, because it means far more of their airborne spit emitted when they breathe, talk, cough, or sneeze is reaching my eyes and lungs than if they would just wear a simple, cheap surgical mask. Medical personnel don’t wear masks for the hell of it; they wear them because it substantially reduces the amount of transmission, and does provide some small amount of protection to the wearer versus wearing nothing.
I don’t even blame people for coming to the conclusion that masks don’t need to be worn. The science has gotten much clearer over the past year and yet our governmental leaders have not only failed to accurately convey what we’ve learned, but have actually lost the trust they may have had. It’s no wonder people are confused about what works to reduce risk and what doesn’t, and how significant the risks are, when our leaders fist told us masks only protect doctors, then told us we could stop the spread with short, poorly enforced lockdowns that maximized economic harm without sufficiently quarantining the population, and now are telling everyone to wear a mask without properly acknowledging that aerosols are a major mechanism for superspreader events.
“...restaurants were by far the riskiest places” for new infections, “about four times riskier than gyms and coffee shops, followed by hotels,”
https://sf.eater.com/21561143/covid-19-restaurants-indoor-di...
"...case-patients were more likely to have reported dining at a restaurant (aOR = 2.4, 95% CI = 1.5–3.8) in the 2 weeks before illness onset than were control-participants."
the simpler, more likely explanation is that those were three different sets of transmissions that happened to be sitting next to each other in a restaurant at the same time, with a clever narrative tying it together. cleverness restrains our otherwise natural skepticism.
we'd likely have seen dozens of similar stories if this was a significant mode of transmission. and nyt is biased and partisan enough to have featured those stories prominently if they'd have been available.
if you'd have focused more on the lack of distancing indoors, that might have been a legitimate concern. but masks are for show in most places, at most times, and your focus on them indicates a retreat to symbolism rather than effect. the primary appeal of masks is for quelling fear and anxiety, not preventing spread.
the one common place they would help, the private social gathering, is where they're donned the very least, because masks have strong connotations of mistrust, which is antithetical to socializing. so masks won't save us, no matter how much force is put behind them. even in countries commonly cited for high mask usage, other more primary mitigative measures are what led to propagation control, not masks. masks are marginal.
walking through a lobby/store or sitting at a table in a restaurant with your family isn't a significant risk, no matter what the other patrons are doing, as long as there's a little distance between (no, the virus is not floating around in significant concentrations to probabalistically infect you from across the room; it falls to the ground and dies quickly). the only other person you should worry about there is your server, who, out of at least "corporate necessity", will likely be wearing a mask, a decent use of masking as someone who interacts closely with lots of strangers (rather than, say, outside, where they're wasted).
this kind of moralizing is not out of a cohesive worry for others, but a divisive fear (anger is a primal reaction to fear). so why are we so fearful and anxious? deconstructing that would be a more fruitful discussion than dwelling so much on the anxiety itself.