> There have been cohorts of people wearing masks all day every day for many decades now. Has there been any evidence of the effects you outlined?
Said masks were generally worn temporarily, not all day, every day, for a job. When worn for long periods of time, before COVID, OSHA actually had forbade it unless there was air filtering and frequent replacement (minimum daily). The way we wear masks, without filtering and with (in practice) no frequent replacement, would have been illegal to compel any person to do a few years ago, let alone study the safety of.
Edit: Also, on that note, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/. It's a long-study on the actual, real-world risks of mask-wearing. It's not concerned with risk/benefit, only the risk side of it, but it shows that masks are far from the risk-free preventative measure we pretend they are. If you already had COVID, looking at what they document (and this is the NIH, remember), it may be worse for your health to continue masking.