What I find fascinating about the mask furore is that there's a complete lack of thinking on both sides. Trumpies think it is about "civil liberties" (hint: it's not) while Democrats believe it's their civic duty to believe we're all going to die unless we perform hygiene theater. In fact, if one can be bothered to look at the studies (all of them) rather than accept newspaper headlines and other non-sources of information, there is actually very little evidence for mask efficacy. When one reads the studies one sees poor experimental design and abysmal statistical interpretations. As the SUMC article in August pointed out in its review of 29 such studies, barely a third were scientifically adequate and none of those showed statistically meaningful results.

It would be better if people took the time to (a) educate themselves on research design & basic statistics, and then (b) read the actual papers and - where possible - look at the raw data sets. But apparently it's just easier to repeat empty nonsense about masks being efficacious, which means we'll learn nothing from the current mindless coronapanic and will simply repeat our errors when a truly serious virus emerges onto the scene.