This is my tightest argument yet.
Mask logic: if people with no symptoms—no sneezing and coughing, which is the supposed asymptomatic and presymptomatic, whose contagion masks supposedly prevent—can spread the disease, then it is granted the virus is fully aerosolized, as most professionals believe, and not even perfectly worn N95 masks changed out daily will stop viruses in either direction. The virus is 100nm or so and the best mesh is 3x that in the best masks, and 100x or more in the masks most people actually wear. It is fleas and chain link fences.
If those without symptoms cannot spread the disease, then there is no reason for people who are not sick to wear masks. They should just stay home, which is the most obvious remedy.
Therefore IN ALL CASES masks make no sense. QED.
And I will point out again this was considered obvious, proven science which was not seriously challenged by anyone, until April 2020. And it was the politics that changed. Obviously.
And I will add, for those of you who cut all the plastic rings on your six packs to protect turtles, who cry over dolphins caught in tuna nets, and who worry about the environment in general: what do you think the effect of flushing 10 billion or more plastic masks into the oceans has been? Take your time.
All life–let me repeat, ALL LIFE–consists in trade-offs. You can have X if you give up Y, or vice versa. What you cannot do is keep and eat your cake at the same time.
And what you SHOULD not do, if you have a whiff of genuine caring, compassion, and humanitarianism in you, is PRETEND this is not true. If you push the masks, you push the fucked up kids, the dead spots in the ocean, the social friction, and still get a disease which really doesn’t give a fuck about the masks.