But in a time of extreme public anxiety, and especially one where the topic of taking some action to try to avoid unknowingly infecting your community has become controversial on its own, is doing a simple thing which signals to the people around you that you're likely taking some level of precaution and are understanding of public health guidelines not worth its benefits to the community?

Some kinds of signaling are useless at best, problematic at worst. But wearing a mask even if you believe you technically don't require one to avoid being contagious seems like a common sense way to promote community during a stressful time to be around strangers - they don't know you, they don't know your medical history, they have no way of knowing when you wait near eachother in the grocery checkout line whether you're carrying antibodies and presumably not capable of being contagious or whether you're just flagrantly ignoring public health advice.

(Ignoring, of course, the subset of people who would inevitably falsely assume they were not capable of being contagious for whatever reasons even if they really could be... we probably all know that friend who swears they had COVID earlier in the year, but did not get tested at the time and have not had an antibody test since to verify. Do we really want those people getting the idea that their anecdotal illness is an opt-out from face coverings in public?)

The many interpretations of public health messaging around the world have shown us pretty well over the last 8 months that many people do really poorly with developing science and/or nuance. "Wear your mask in public, always" removes a lot of room for error, either malicious or just misinformed.

If you’re doing it for virtue signaling and the people who think it’s nothing but virtue signaling can tell because you’re open about your motivation, doing something for appearances harms the good you’re actually trying to accomplish.