I don't support labeling an opposing view as 'ignorant'.
At the same time ...
Is not a fact. It's a commonly repeated
misunderstanding. Your comparing the deaths of two diseases, with each measured by a different method. When you compare actual counted deaths from influenza from the last 6 flu seasons, "... that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620".
The main reason we don't is that flu transmission self-limits. Symptoms appear within a day or two and the infected person usually stays home during the time they are most contagious and they are contagious for a shorter period of time. Also, the stakes are quite a bit lower, someone admitted for coronavirus has a much greater chance of dying than someone admitted for influenza.
No part of this discussion is cut and dry.
The reasoning for wearing face coverings is sound, research shows they do limit the spread of the virus, a significant effect even if not always a large one.
But...
The reasoning for not wearing them is not altogether garbage either. Moist cloth masks may harbor pathogens. Filtering respirators do reduce oxygen availability... to a worrisome degree in the context of pregnant women. They are definitely a trigger for many with anxiety disorders. The wearing of masks is often little more than theater, with wearers leaving their nose out or covering their faces with the thinnest hosiery material in order to garner the appearance of social compliance and usually satisfying the actual legal requirements. And there isn't a consensus on just how much they actually help.
And yet, when plopped into a room full of people and told that one of the people in that room is contagious, even people that hate the things have voted they would prefer everyone wear them.
Few people actually like wearing face masks, and a similar number are actually incapable of tolerating them at all. Some of us are fairly indifferent, for the rest it's really a gradient of how much each of us dislikes them. I think that if our support of face covering requirements were determined solely by whether or not we
can tolerate them there would simply be no debate left at all.
People who legit cannot wear a mask would continue in their present numbers and few, if any, of the rest of us would care. Nobody screams at maskless children the way those Staten Island savages treated that maskless woman. We trust that a child going without a mask is operating on the principle that it's actually unhealthy for them to wear a mask. But when we see an adult without one we take it as a choice they are making to put their comfort over the health of others, because in most cases that's what it is.
I honestly believe most of the people fighting face mask requirements believe that at the very least they do more good than harm, if they had to be stuck in a room with a covid patient and they could choose to have everyone in the room or no one in the room wear a mask, they would choose everyone.
Why isn't that enough? There was a time when that was enough. In the 30s it was common wisdom that babies needed lots of fresh air, so people in apartments kept them in cages hung out the window.
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Can you even imagine this happening today?