teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:24 pm
What is the side of the caution? There are ways masks can be counter-productive, such as lulling people into false sense of security and causing people to touch their faces more often. Like Fauci said: "
Masks, while they do provide some protection, they do not provide the protection people think they provide. And, considering that when common people wear masks, they tend to touch their faces more often, they may even be counter-productive.".
That's some dumb rhetoric and a half.
Would you suggest people do not wear their seatbelts?
There are ways seatbelts can be counter-productive, such as lulling people into false sense of security and causing people to be distracted and look away from the road to adjust their seatbelts. Like someone said: "
Seatbelts, while they do provide some protection, they do not provide the protection people think they provide. And, considering that when common people wear seatbelts, they tend to be more at ease by being distracted more often, they may even be counter-productive."
On top of all this, there are some cases where seatbelts choked people.
Point: masks, just like seatbelts, or helmets, or any safe measure for that matter, far outweigh the negatives with the benefits they provide.
The 'lulling people into a false sense of security' would not be there to begin with if they didn't provide an ACTUAL security to begin with.
So, rather than saying that, it would be 'lulling people into a real sense of security' - at which point, it doesn't really work anymore to say it that way.
'Lulling people into a false sense of security' implies that the safety is either not there at all, or grossly exaggerated. There is no reason to believe the majority of the people think they're invincible to COVID with the masks. Nobody actually thinks that, but contrarily there is major skepticism.
It's actually reasonable to believe that without masks people wouldn't have taken the pandemic nearly as seriously, and there they would have been lulled into a false sense of security, ending up with a much bigger amount of cases faster and taking it seriously too late.
And to top it all off, the 'sense of security' is not misplaced, because there is actually security provided.
When you consider that people will have to go out and do stuff, the security of masks + the possibility of overestimating the safety of them is STILL much better than having no mask, because you will eventually and inevitably find yourself in the same situations regardless of whether you're feeling safe or not: in line to buy groceries, at the bank to put money, walking by someone on the sidewalk, etc.
In those and other situations it's better for everybody if you're wearing a mask, so 'lulling people in a false sense of security' is a very weak point to say people might be better off without masks. By all means, it would take a bit of goodness away from wearing masks, but not make it go negative.
And then you have to oppose that with the situations where the security of masks is still paired with adequate caution or with fear.
So you either have:
1. security of masks + behaving as if the masks offer more protection than they do (rare, and people who behave irresponsibly probably do it not because of masks, but because they don't care regardless)
2. security of masks + behaving as if the masks offer the right amount of protection
3. security of masks + behaving as if the masks offer less protection than they do (number 2. and 3. together represent a higher amount of people than 1., because there is no reason to believe the majority of people would grossly overestimate what masks can do, just like there is no reason to believe the majority of the people would grossly underestimate what masks can do, although fear and caution during a pandemic would definitely make people be somewhere between 2. and 3.)
Just taking into consideration situation 1. is dishonest, and it becomes clear that removing the masks and the safety they provide becomes a negative, just leaving more people scared or people that don't care behind, with no protection whatsoever.