The True Purpose of Masks

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, nails it on masks:

Masks, as Twitter wags have noted, are by now the equivalent of MAGA hats for Blue America. As washed-up child activist David Hogg put it last year, “I feel the need to continue wearing my mask outside, even though I’m fully vaccinated, because the inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I’m a conservative.” 

Such statements capture an unfortunate fact about our society: We’re so politically tribalized that even our response to the pandemic says more about politics than about anything else. That’s especially true when it comes to masking...

The problem is that despite all the calls to “follow the science,” the science on masks doesn’t actually demonstrate that they are magic talismans against contracting or spreading COVID. In the right circumstances, they are modestly useful. Medical personnel who wear N-95 masks, gloves and goggles while tending to patients very seldom get infected (in fact, when they catch COVID, it’s usually at home, not at work). 

On the other hand, the average person walking around Walgreens wearing a “face covering” made of cloth is mostly engaging in Hygiene Theater. Some “face coverings” even make things worse: The ever-popular fleece neck gaiter appears to do so, by breaking up exhaled droplets into smaller ones that stay in the air longer...

A recent study conducted by a US Army medical team and published in the Southern Medical Journal looked closely at mask mandates in Bexar County, Texas, home of San Antonio, and found that the mandates didn’t help. Its conclusion: “There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate.” 

Nonetheless, mask mandates are a common response to COVID spikes (as are lockdowns, which the World Health Organization recommends against). They provide a sense that politicians are doing something, and they have become a tribal identifier for people on the left.

Wearing a mask lets you publicly proclaim that you take COVID seriously and, by its very visibility, lets leftists show their strength in many cities and neighborhoods, while identifying opponents for shaming and exclusion. (Hogg also commented about “very liberal area[s] where 99 percent of the people you see are wearing masks” — you don’t want to stand out as a Republican there!)

The very visibility of masking makes shaming easy, and I think many people are into masks as much for the shaming opportunities, or the fear of being shamed, as for any concrete benefit.

The headline of that article proclaims, "Masks are here to stay as long as libs need to shame their political enemies".  The only so-called science involved is political science.