I went in a shop today without my mask on!

Why is it soul crushing when masks have been proven time and time again to do nothing? Fauci in the US said not to wear masks, they do nothing. Many studies show they do nothing. American CDC recently even said that they have very little effect on COVID infections. Poland government said not to wear masks they do nothing. Then they decide everyone must wear masks, even cloth ones are good. Now suddenly cloth ones do nothing and everyone must wear medical masks - all the while virus is 1/3rd the size of minimum filtration of medical mask. Where is credibility if for 1 year cloth mask is ok but suddenly it is not? It is all a fucking joke. I'm not even saying as some conspiracy to "dehumanize" etc, I honestly thing some politicians and their friends are making money from selling masks. If someone coughs on your medical mask, even if virus does not immediately penetrate then it will be sitting there in water mist and it will pass mask from suction when you breath.

It is a virus, not radiation.

Mask is great if you are sick. If you sneeze, cough, etc it stops so much of the "mist" from escaping and travelling. However, if you are not sick, you are not sneezing and coughing then it is really doing nothing. Studies have shown that people with no symptoms do not spread the virus. Everyone has seen all the gifs and videos of "how masks protect everyone" - think about what you are looking at - a thermal camera. It is very obvious when you breath out the air heats up.

For years we have all lived without masks, flu existed, people coughed, people touched things, we washed hands much less frequently. This is all going to end with common cold killing people because we will not have immunity to anything.

Just live like normal human and not in fear, running to car in shame covering your mouth with hand because you forgot piece of useless cloth to cover your healthy mouth.

Here in Czech Republic it is compulsory here everywhere inside and outside. More then 60 % do not bother. Yesterday, I went to have a new battery installed, maybe 10 mechanics coming and going NOT a single mask, and when I asked, I was told :" We do not bother here" . Right now the Czechs are worse in the World on per capita "everything". 16,000 new cases 250 dead and 9,000 in hospitals in the last 24h all is collapsing but the idiots do not give a shit other then protesting for their fucking freedom to die and infect others. It is soul crushing

I noticed same, and i started to wonder i am idiot for wearing mask outside considering half people outside dont have it at all, and police doesn't seems to be bothered with it . Tho, at-least they deployed "crowd control " on naplavka lol . So in shortly, the reason why CZ in this situation, is lack of enforcement - either the lack of local control, and also probably only country in europe which dont have any kind of border control.

Have any of you ever seen an individual vaping? Not dope but some kind of tobacco product. Have you seen the cloud that disburses when that person exhales? It is huge. I've seen people vaping in cars and the cloud that comes out of their car is massive. Imagine them vaping in a room or walking in the street. Now imagine they have COVID-19 and it's all in that vape exhaust. Take a deep breath. Would you rather have a mask on or a mask off? We're talking common sense here. Of course, masks work, maybe not perfectly, but better than nothing. This mask debate is Darwinism, don't be on the wrong side of natural selection.

Lets say we're in a room together, and I fart. My fart stinks...

Since none of us here (presumably) is a scientist expert on this topic we all are just repeating whatever we have been told (or chose to believe).

The fact is that every study shows a marginal impact from masks if worn correctly. Is that marginal impact worth the trillions of dollars spent on masks? the billions of tons of trash? Rational people will probably come to the conclusion that it isn't.

When we picture in that most people do not wear masks correctly, even one year into this shit, then the marginal impact becomes even less of argument compared to the downsides.

Masks to me feel a lot like airport security, its there and people are encouraged to believe it helps. But all it really does is make us feel safe when we aren't.

In all fairness, N95 or N99 masks do work - they filter smaller then COVID - BUT on a longer scale you can't really breath in them. My wife used an N99 at work for a while and had migraines every day. Even in the vaping example, the vape will land on the surgical or cloth mask and you will suck in the virus through the mask when you breath. Also realistically with some people usign the same single-use surgical mask for weeks

Here's a cool visualization of how much trash these masks are producing. 3 million masks are tossed out per minute.

We hardly had a flu season this year because of masks.

The reason we didn't have much of a flu season is because people didn't travel and so the flu virus (which comes to us from Asia and Australia) didn't get the chance to spread like it usually does.