Good article and I agree with just about everything the author wrote.
One interesting observation about our little town here on the San Francisco Peninsula. All of the local restaurants (and there are MANY) in our downtown moved to outdoor dining a year ago. The city granted them permission to use the diagonal parking spots on Main and State Streets for dining, so many of the restaurants built nice raised platforms surrounded by planters, barrels, and fences; installed outdoor heaters; planted hedges and flowers; hung banners. With this transformation, the downtown looks different and better in so many ways than it was. On Friday and Saturday nights, the outdoor dining places are packed! And they are quite busy on the other nights of the week as well. The whole place has a festive, European feel which is really nice.
The thing that absolutely cracks me up is everybody dining and drinking is maskless for an hour or two, yet they dutifully don their masks for a 30 second stroll down the sidewalk to their parked car a dozen yards or half block away.
The belief in the magic face amulet is astonishing. Somehow dining, drinking, talking and laughing temporarily end the fear, but it resumes as soon as they depart the safe zone. People are nuts.
No statistical difference in covid infection rates between mask- wearers and non-mask- wearers.
Masks are political theater; Americans should be ashamed at how long it has allowed politicians to perpetrate such a fraud.
Yes, I do that. Why? Not because I think it does any good. I think it's ridiculous. I do it so that the petty dictators who run my city and state allow me some semblance of a normal life and allow my favorite eateries to be more or less open.
Of course it's stupid. I'm a hockey fan. The team plays the game with no masks. The players take their breathers on the bench with no masks. But the reserve goalie and the coaches wear masks. Why? So that the morons peddling this as "science" let them play the game they love.