What I would stipulate, at root, is that freedom means being able to say no for any reason, or no reason at all. No hard scientific data supports mask wearing, the way it is done by the public. It has mild utility as source protection for symptomatic people, but almost no use in preventing the spread of the disease, i.e. as PPE. If you want to avoid the disease, your best play is to stay away from people and ideally to stay home. Talk to no strangers in public. That is more or less foolproof. Everything else is a calculated risk, which includes the risk of weakening your immune system from inactivity.
And I would suggest the “why not” argument is a slippery slope. Many people like me argued, when the first crazies started talking about deflecting attention from their long term failures with respect to the black community by destroying statues, that if they pulled down Lee or Stonewall Jackson, they would soon be pulling down Washington and Jefferson.
We were mocked. But we were right.
And with this mask thing, I just find them uncomfortable. I don’t like how they smell. My gut tells me that on balance they damage my own health. I don’t feel as good wearing one, particularly for a long period of time.
But the road to hell is paved with small bites, small bits. Pebbles. Nothing large, but lots of it. A little here and a little there, and pretty soon they are putting microchips in us. This may sound extreme, but so too did the idea of toppling a statue of George Washington. But now it has happened. He was also set on fire, if memory serves. By Communists. Proud Communists. In this country.
To me a mask also says “live in fear”. It is my perception that most of the most scared people are the young, who are empirically at the lowest risk. But they have been taught to live in fear. It’s what they do. They hide easily and with practice behind computer screens and relate virtually. But that is also a virtual life. What do you remember at the end of it but fake images, and 2 dimensional pictures of people you hardly know?
I was wondering as well what the effect on the brain is on seeing people all day, but never seeing their faces. Surely that is unnatural? Surely we are meant to see facial expressions? Surely seeing featureless people all day every day activates some part of our fight or flight response, to at least some low extent?
I really feel you have to practice saying NO just because you feel like it. Just because nobody has the right to tell you how to live your life. If I’m not coughing, then my mask is not protecting anyone, according to all I read. So the demand that I comfort them with compliance is really selfish on their part, not mine.