Masks: For the Record

John Tierney: "No Masks, Please, We're Rational."

   My view on masks, for what it's worth (which is not much) remains about the same as it has been for the last year or so. To wit: I find it hard to believe that masks do nothing. Intuitively, I'd think that that better masks have a better chance of doing at least something. There is rather obviously a pro-mask bias among the "elite"/ on the left. That includes the CDC. We basically know that all the orthodoxies in that sector are left-biased. And the left has adopted, largely as a matter of values / politics, an alarmist view about COVID, and correspondingly overly-positive views of masks, vaxes, lockdowns, etc. And, of course, there is a general tendency to impose their views via government / coercion. IMO conservatives have gone too far in the other direction, especially with regard to the vax--many older and less-healthy conservatives, who it seems would benefit from the vax, refuse to get it. Radical anti-vax views proliferate on the right. There is an orthodoxy in some sectors of the right that the vax is an absolute killer--contrary to the available evidence. 

  At any rate...bottom line: I'd be surprised if masks did nothing. But the available evidence--available to me, anyway--does not seem to support mask mandates. Forced to bet, I'd bet that the harm of masks outweighs their benefits. Though I probably wouldn't bet a whole lot. We know that wearing a mask has costs--I, for example, really dislike wearing them.* And we (basically) know that mask mandates did significant harm to kids. (And that kids aren't at much risk anyway.) And, in the absence of strong evidence in favor of mandates, I think we have to leave the decision to individuals. 

   And, of course, COVID is less dangerous than the Prevailing Orthodoxy has it... So that alters a lot of calculations. 

   Anyway, in general, I still think the Great Barrington Declaration got things a lot righter than the Prevailing Orthodoxy.

   Anyway 2: That's my thinking on the matter--again, not worth much.

*I might also argue that the progressive Powers That Be have made things worse by their coercion. Now I--like many others--also dislike masks because they are forced on me. Wearing a mask feels like a kind of capitulation to the PPTB...