I find people not wearing masks much more alarming than people not wearing them. I am much more alarmed at the prospect of mass death than people wearing jaunty masks.
In Sweden, where there's little mandated, so far only some 6000 out of 10 million died of COVID-19. That is significant (in the statistical sense), but hardly mass death (given that in the relevant time frame some 40000 died of unrelated causes).
Masks alone don't cause the widespread panic, mass media did their part.
In Sweden, they have socialized healthcare, strong unions, and robust social safety net, and an overall healthier population. So America should copy those things too right?
Ah, but I don't live in Sweden, I live in NYC. So, mass death is on my mind.
Nobody here panicked in February, or the first week of March. We were more or less going about our daily lives like normal, because that's what the state health people told us to do. Nobody wore masks, nobody social distanced.
By April 1st, NYC was seeing 500 deaths a day and increasing. It's the largest mass casualty event in NYC since 9/11, and was much worse, in body-count terms. It was comparable to the 1918 flu epidemic.
Of course, a NYC-level of mass death is absolutely not guaranteed to happen elsewhere. Different populations, different habits, luck- there's variables. But do not tell me that it's media hysteria when you didn't listen to ambulance sirens for a month.
