Dear Yserbius,
Congratulations! I think we have arrived at some agreements. While the message has gotten across to you, that is because you put your faith in it. Others have less faith because they did not start with – or quickly lost the trust that you have. All though the messaging does not make an overall difference to you, it does to others. As is evident from the same health officials calling their own efforts unsuccessful. The fact is mask mandates were not evenly used across any large part of the country.
Now to be fair. The other posters in these discussions have stated that they mask at least in some instances. Since the messaging has resulted with relatively inefficient mask mandates, it is hard to say that they are supposed to be masking more. We were left with unclear guidelines. Is a mask needed in a public playground? How about an outdoor waiting area? When eating out, at what point do we remove our masks? What are the guidelines for asthmatics? What is more important, clean air flow or masks? I could go on for another hundred lines. So once again to be fair. Who is to say that everyone else is wearing their mask too little? Maybe you and I are overdoing it.
And to clear up the side issues. Government rights was your point. I do not care if what the government did was wrong or not. (Spoiler alert! I think every move was well within the legal limits of goverment power. The Courts struck down some measures because public health officials did not make a clear case. Which comes down to messaging again.) The question is if their overall methods worked. And the answer is not so much. By personal autonomy, I meant that individual mask wearers have the choice of what type, how large, and a lot of other ‘circumstantial deviances’ that the government did not define for them.