That was my point as well - if everybody wore the proper mask for a month around the globe, this would have been over with long ago! But, no, people feel entitled to make this stay here and continue to kill millions each year!
You can't avoid exposure to a highly contagious respiratory virus. You can't spend the rest of your life masked. And evolution would have make us capable of adapting to being able to handle such viruses. It's not like COVID-19 would be the end of the human race without indefinite masking/social-distancing. Viruses like COVID-19 have emerged innumerable times in the past. Without an innate ability to acquire some level of immunity to such viruses, we wouldn't exist.
COVID-19 was only different in that in 2019, at risk demographics like the elderly population, had no prior exposure to it.
Most of the long COVID cases stem from the first and second waves here.
Now that we have a vaccine and a bivalent booster, realize that you're suggesting masking for at least another 5 years. You said this, but it also has to be N95 at this point with how contagious it is.
> people get reinfected every few months
The realistic estimates are more like every year.
It’s very very contagious and you have higher odds with worse measures but it also isn’t magic.
Face masks might be a novelty in the Western Hemisphere, but in the more populated other half of our planet, people have been wearing masks as less inconvenient than getting sick.
People should learn about Hayflick limit before saying they can keep surviving a reinfection every couple of months - especially one, which exploits such a common receptor as ACE2!