The problem is that you don’t know you’re sick with this thing, sometimes for up to a week, and sometimes you never have symptoms at all. But you can give it to other people during this time, and then they can get very sick.
That’s the purpose of the mask: to stop the asymptomatic positives from spreading it to others. The mask is not about fear, it’s about consideration.
I suppose I could potentially get it and be asymptomatic but the wife and I are in the high-risk age group (I'm the youth at 67+) and I haven't heard any trends of us older folks being so lucky as to not suffer if we catch it.. We both take precautions because of our ages.