Wait, what? What's your epistemology here? I thought medical studies overwhelmingly show that masking does make a difference. Are you suggesting that we should just ignore the studies and listen to people 'who make close contact with reality'? What does that even mean?
Does it work better than nothing for some time-limited period? Sure.
But does it work? No, if pregnancy is not an acceptable outcome then you can't rely on it.
You can't take the probability of contracting an infection on one exposure and then extrapolate it out. Over a long enough period p reaches 1.
Right now we're in a stable situation even without masks and most countries here in Europe have abandoned them even in public transport and doing just fine. Sadly where I live (Spain) is not one of them :(
But for personal protection there's no point. COVID has become so contagious we're all going to get it sooner rather than later anyway. Might as well get it over with. Or at least make it a personal choice. Those who are worried about it can wear the heavy masks but leave the rest of us alone :)
Wait a minute:
A. You agree masks slow transmission.
B. You agree the issue with covid is 'case spikes' overwhelming hospitals.
You don't see the logic of mandating A, to prevent B? For the record, masks work far less well when only some people wear them.
Obviously, masks should come off at some point, but there's no point being hasty. They make sense.
If a new version pops up that does cause issues again there is a point again. Not right now.
And when one does pop up that does this there is sufficient warning to just put the mandate back in place again. Right now it's just not a proportionate measure. Many countries that have dropped the mask mandate are proving this. It's a really heavy-handed measure to have in place "just in case". It should be used only when there is an immediate problem. This last part is my opinion of course, and I assume you don't agree but this is the part we won't agree on.
I get that's not everybody's opinion. I would be pretty relaxed about an end to mask mandates if that was a majority opinion amongst public health experts. I'd also be relaxed about mask mandates continuing: my feeling is that people get way too emotionally involved in these things and it's best to just relax and accept that public health policy is by nature broad brush.
For this reason I really hate the masks and in particular the "broad brush" nature of the regulations here. There is just absolutely no way to get an exception. I've lost a lot of trust in society over the past years. I know it's an edge case but my work, public health agencies etc, none of them really give a damn.
For example at the office I've proposed to do a self-test every day I go in, that's a small deal for me. Protection is not perfect (they can give false negatives) but neither are masks. But they just don't care (even though I had to do a mandatory training praising their "commitment to mental health"). They told me straight out they don't care whether I wear a mask or not but they don't want to set a bad example. It's all politics and virtue signalling. This is what I mean by 'health theatre'.
I don't think this is really a mask issue, it's a, 'people not taking psychological suffering seriously' issue. It's a bit like why everybody is so blase about depression, even though it's the number-one killer for many age groups.
You could not compare masks with contraception because if you keep having sex, yes, it will result in pregnancy but infections diseases are not like sex because they come in waves and if you can outlive the current wave, your risk drops near zero until next wave hits.
Another important difference is that you could not have lesser pregnancy but you definitely can have less serious symptoms when you are exposed to lesser amount of virus particles.