The costs associated with widespread everyday masking are severe. You even quoted the ones that I'd mentioned earlier.
Just to overcome those severe costs, masking would have had to consistently bring astounding benefits.
At a bare minimum, that should have been a nearly-complete end to the transmission of not just this virus, but others, as well.
Unfortunately, we didn't see that happen, because masking isn't effective.
We experienced the severe costs of masking, but without receiving any benefits from enduring those costs.
This was demonstrated by what's among the largest set of scientific experiments ever performed, involving many millions of people, in many nations, and over two years of masking in some cases.
Yes, and stated that they are, for the most part, not actually costs.
Masks don't cause accessibility problems, they don't cause child development issues, they don't cause social strife when consistently warn and enforced, and they don't cause abusive policing (police don't enforce mask mandates anywhere in the US, and consistently were one of the least compliant groups!).
You can't keep lying about these supposedly "severe" costs when anyone with eyes can see that they're made up. I mean you can, but it's your credibility lost.
Masking certainly does cause accessibility problems for many people.
For example, people with mobility and other issues involving their fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and ears can find it quite difficult, or even impossible, to put on, to wear, or to remove a mask.
Masking can also aggravate respiratory and cardiovascular-related medical issues.
Masking can aggravate PTSD and other psychological issues.
Masking can cause problems for those with hearing-related issues, as it can make it difficult to hear the muffled voices of others, as well as making lip-reading impossible.
In jurisdictions where accessibility is considered important, the forced masking bylaws or legislation typically had accessibility-related exemptions, because masking does cause severe accessibility problems for many people.
The harmful social impacts of masking take many forms.
Among the most egregious were when exempt individuals were denied service, reasonable accommodation, and in some cases employment.
Such people also faced significant harassment when in public, even in so-called "tolerant" societies. Sometimes this would involve verbal abuse. Sometimes it would involve having creeps take and share photos of them, in attempts to socially shame them. Sometimes it would unfortunately involve physical abuse, even with the police being the perpetrators at times.
A less-visible aspect to this very real threat of harassment was how some people just stopped participating in society as much as possible, even at the cost of financial, psychological, and social harm to themselves.
Forced masking, especially in schools, has definitely had a negative impact on the education and development of children. This manifests in various ways, including communication-related delays and difficulties, trust/fear-related issues, immune system deficiencies, and so on.
Perhaps you were spared the worst of this based on where you happen to live, and luckily didn't have to experience the costs of masking yourself.
Others, however, suffered significantly because of masking, even if you may not realize it.
I have.
> For example, people with mobility and other issues involving their fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and ears can find it quite difficult, or even impossible, to put on, to wear, or to remove a mask.
This is minimal and solvable. If someone needs assistance putting on a mask, they need assistance with other daily activities and so can get that assistance as well.
> Masking can cause problems for those with hearing-related issues, as it can make it difficult to hear the muffled voices of others, as well as making lip-reading impossible.
This is also solvable, with for example clear masks that are used in speech therapy contexts.
> Masking can also aggravate respiratory and cardiovascular-related medical issues.
This is not true, there's no support for this in the literature. While full-face respirators can reduce airflow, facemasks like those commonly worn and recommended don't decrease airflow or O2 intake significantly enough to matter. As a rule of thumb, if you cannot breath through a mask either the issue is psychosomatic or you should be wearing a plastic face mask that provides you supplementary oxygen, because you are not sufficiently able to breathe on your own.
> In jurisdictions where accessibility is considered important, the forced masking bylaws or legislation typically had accessibility-related exemptions, because masking does cause severe accessibility problems for many people.
Please cite them.
> Among the most egregious were when exempt individuals were denied service, reasonable accommodation, and in some cases employment.
Please cite them. What is a reasonable exemption from mask wearing if a building requires all present to wear masks?
> A less-visible aspect to this very real threat of harassment was how some people just stopped participating in society as much as possible, even at the cost of financial, psychological, and social harm to themselves.
Lots of people do this for many reasons, for example the large swaths of people who (rightly or wrongly) still feel unsafe going out and about because of the dangers of Covid and the fact that most areas in society don't mask. Personally, I feel those people, even most with immunicompromisations, are overstating the risks associated with involvement in society. By the same token, I think the people you describe are overstating the risks of masking. I cannot conclusively say whether one faces a greater real issue than the other. What I can say is that masks to provide conclusive benefits, so the imagined risks of people who fear them are less of an issue to me than the imagined risks of people who overestimate the dangers of covid and other airborne infectious diseases.
> Perhaps you were spared the worst of this based on where you happen to live, and luckily didn't have to experience the costs of masking yourself.
Given where I live and my social circles, I and those around me masked far more aggressively and for far longer than the majority of the united states. I'll reiterate that there have been few to know real negative impacts from these policies.
I was in the hospital for 2 days when my wife gave birth, and I was supposed to wear the mask 24/7. Luckily they didn't enforce it strictly so I was able to sleep without the mask.
That is why vaccinating and wearing masks is so important: you're not just protecting yourself, but also those who legitimately cannot get vaccines (e.g. due to allergies), where the vaccines are ineffective (people with autoimmune disorders, on immunosuppressants or with a generally non-respondent immune system), or who cannot wear masks at all or for prolonged amounts of time (e.g. people with claustrophobia or weakened lungs).
