COVID caused a lot of mind-changing. For example, we thought that plain cloth masks were somewhat effective at stopping transmission, but now we know that they are not. It's surreal to think back on wearing them even outside at times, when someone would pass on the sidewalk, for example. But it may have been rational to take extreme precautions at first, when we didn't know better. It's just too bad that there weren't many real-world studies done on masking efficacy, so that we could know what would and would not make a difference.