On masks

I recently saw masks (cloth, washable, reusable, not medical grade) for sale at the grocery store for the first time, four months after we shut things down "for fifteen days". Should have appeared much faster than that.

Now, there's a lot of debate about the use of masks, and it's become just another political football.

There was an opportunity for masks to not be a political issue. It simply required an unbiased, science-driven response at all stages in the process.

Instead of March messages telling us to not buy masks, imagine if we had instead gotten this:
"There are no studies about the effectiveness of masks at stopping the transmission of COVID-19, though they're not likely to make matters worse. Feel free to use a simple cloth mask or repurposed bandanna. However, please preserve the N95 and medical masks for medical professionals and first responders until supply is expanded."

Imagine if, in May, the same people who criticized "open the economy" protesters responded to anti-police protesters with the same fervor.

Imagine if we heard that all state prisoners were required to wear masks. Instead, we got officials in Democratic states saying we had to release prisoners to protect them from COVID-19, and then they threatened people who wanted to open barber shops with prison.

Because this wasn't an unbiased, science-driven response, it became a political issue, one of control. And people react predictably to government attempts at control.

In reality, there is no way to get a scientific answer to the question about how effective masks are at stopping virus transmission, because you can't design an ethical experiment to test it.