It's not quite free; the bridge of my nose sometimes experiences some irritation, and we've had to deal with more than a hand full of hateful/snarky in person comments, but that's no biggie.

Being from the south, we smile when we pass each other on the street. You can’t do that in a mask. Maybe you folks from NYC and SF don’t miss that—after all you can still glare at people with hostility wearing a mask—but it’s a major loss in quality of life for the rest of us.

Professionals wearing masks in specific contexts is different than advocating for ordinary people to wear masks in public settings.

So you effectively just insulted like 1.5 billion asians who've been wearing masks for years?

I'd call it humanizing. I care for others so I put on the mask.

Perhaps to some. That feeling is probably largely driven by one's overall outlook.

We started masking before any of the mandates because it just made sense to do so, to us at least.

> It never ever should never have been mandated, only recommended.

That's a hard question in my opinion. I naturally tend toward letting people do what they want unless they're clearly hurting others. Others have argued that masking does unambiguously reduce harm to others, but I don't find it so clear cut.

I'm personally less uncomfortable with mask mandates than the widespread shutdowns. Those shutdowns caused massive harm to people. Masking? Not so much.

Note I'm not quite willing, even now, to fully support mask mandates, now or previously. I see both sides of the issue.

> It’s sad you get downvoted.

Agreed, it is sad that opposing, perhaps uncomfortable viewpoints get pushed down.

Why do you think this? I see someone wearing a mask and I see someone with enough respect for their fellow man that they don't want to get them sick. That's not fear or control, that's compassion. I don't think compassion is uniquely human, but it still is humanizing.

Maybe a little fear would be healthy for some people if it makes them act in a socially integrated manner. Anybody who's had covid probably doesn't want to get it again.

And you don't want to do it because you can't see every X person who caught the virus dropping dead in front of you, since all negative consequences happen out of sight and come back at you with statistics months later you simply can't bring yourself to care, that's all.

Wearing mask is as revolting as sex against one's natural "orientation". If someone thinks this is unreasonable and one should "get help" to "fix" it, I remind them that they may be fighting against strongly held "identity" belief. "Conversion therapy" is being declared evil, for some valid reasons. And I won't even say how I feel about forced, mandatory mask wearing.

I can be sold on the idea that covering one face (by any means) removes a lot of communication and social clues that are inherently human.

But control?

Covering your face, as a primate, is not a natural thing to do. Our brains have huge areas dedicated to recognition of subtle differences in facial features. We're literally wired for facial recognition. More than almost any other feature of our bodies, our faces define us as individuals.

Assuming that obscuring the face has zero cost is clearly wrong. I honestly can't believe I have to say this out loud.

1) Neither is wearing pants or a shirt. 2) Something being 'natural' doesn't make it right.

>Assuming that obscuring the face has zero cost is clearly wrong.

It doesn't need to have zero cost in order to be the correct thing to do. The question is whether or not the trade-off is worthwhile. Let's saying masking always under all conditions is too much of an imposition, are there restrictions we can place that make the trade-off better?

For instance: Is masking in high density communal areas during respiratory disease seasons with an X drop in disease propagation worth not seeing people's faces in that setting for that time period.

To extrapolate this back to the pants/shirt distinction; human life would end in a generation if we weren't ever able to take off our pants and shirt as we would never have sex again, but the intolerability of that restriction doesn't make it socially accepted for me to rub my bare ass onto a bus seat.

We can't have a discussion about how best to adopt masks, pants, or shirts as a technology if the only way they'll be accepted is if they're always a pure benefit in any situation.

I don't dispute this. You're more than welcome to continue doing whatever you want and make that trade-off for yourself. I won't be participating, because to me, the value of seeing human faces vastly exceeds the benefit of avoiding a cold (assuming that is even achievable, which I don't grant).

But the metaphor of "pants" is absurd. I wear pants because they keep me warm and protect my soft bits and make me look snazzy, not because someone else is making a moral judgment about my choice of clothing being "the correct thing to do".

Yes that's the point. It's a reductio ab absurdem. The pant metaphor is obviously absurd for the same reason that the initial position you posited is absurd. In order to salvage your initial position, you need to differentiate the logic or premises from the absurd argumentation.

Pants and Shirts aren't symbols of fear and control despite being mandated in most areas of public life, but shackles, prison garb and other elements of clothing certainly would be. Therefore there's an element other than being mandated that makes clothing a symbol of fear and control. This is what the pants metaphor shows.

>I won't be participating, because to me, the value of seeing human faces vastly exceeds the benefit of avoiding a cold. This is also reductive (not the personal choice aspect, but rather how it ties into the original discussion of masks as symbols of fear and control); would you agree with the faces over mask rule during a surgery with patients susceptible to infection? Would you consider hospital rules that OR staff wear masks during such surgeries to be authoritarian overreach?

I think if you're willing to admit that 1) there are public health concerns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and 2) that there's a trade-off to be made, then "I won't be participating" is a bit too absolutist to flow from the remainder of your beliefs. Certainly you can try refining a condition like "masking in high density communal areas during respiratory disease seasons" to be more or less restrictive rather than ignoring the issue altogether.

If we can do that, we can have a more meaningful discussion about where masking could be appropriate, rather than discussing whether or not it should occur at all.

Anyways, this is an old thread so I'll drop off. Have a nice day.

Btw idk about others but I wear a mask indoors with strangers, like in public transport or shops. I get to see all the faces I want to see and show mine outdoors or when video calling or if they are close friends or cohabitants.

Wearing a mask in public has only one cost for healthy people: a dirty mask can make you sick so you must have a clean mask, and that costs either money or time spent washing (and chance of washing it wrong)