Come Back RSM789!

Trying to cast doubt on the expertise of others is a common tactic of those who have none themselves.

1). I don't understand. You are discussing our response to the virus already. That is the topic this thread is now dealing with. I suspect the reason you don't want to also discuss the rationale for shutting down, for example, elementary and high schools is because it is so self evidently weak.

Obligatory mask wearing is just the tip of the iceberg of the US overreaction. Many of the initial responses were sensible but were based on overly pessimistic assumptions regarding the virus's mortality rate and infectivity. We now have enough evidence to show that many of the initial responses were ineffective at best and in many cases harmful. But there have been too few appropriate adjustments in the response.
 This is why, for example, at the coin flip for the Notre Dame/Alabama game yesterday they had only one team captain go out for the coin flip instead of the usual 4 or 5, the justification given being to reduce the risk of transmission of Covid....... symbolic social distancing when they're going to be breathing and leaning all over each other for the next 3 hours, anyway. The semi-comic silliness is, as they say, "intuitively obvious to the most casual observer."

2). We both know I understand a lot more about this virus than you ever will. My point, which you have evidently missed, is that some of the current recommendations for mask use - like many of the other recommendations - are unnecessarily restrictive and do little if any good.

3). The same is true of yours versus my understanding of the appropriate use of statistics. The initial restrictive recommendations to reduce Covid spread were based on statistics............ and those statistics were in error. Those are the ones Mark Twain was referring to, not mine. The benefit of wearing masks of dubious effectiveness in all people all the time is demonstrably weak.

You seem to be of the opinion that if there is any potential benefit from everybody wearing masks all the time that it should be required.  But consider that some 40,000 Americans have died on US roads as a direct result of relaxing speed limits since 1993.  (Close to the 52,000 under the age of 65 who have died from Covid). And that number will continue to increase by about 2000 every year.

(https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/speed-limit-increases-are-tied-to-37-000-deaths-over-25-years#:~:text=Rising%20speed%20limits%20over%20the,a%20new%20IIHS%20study%20shows.)

Therefore - given your reasoning - why should we not reduce all the speed limits back to what they were in 1993?............................Luca

And let's also ignore the fact the cloth material actually make the aerosols smaller and easier to spread the virus.

Something akin to wearing a condom with holes in them.

And let's also ignore the fact the cloth material actually make the aerosols smaller and easier to spread the virus.