You can lump some people into that category but it’s absolutely untrue to say non compliance “was due to people…)
How many people didn’t wear their mask the right way? Wore a cut up t-shirt as a mask? Didn’t cover their nose? Had mask gaps around their cheeks? Forgot a mask, but ran into a store real quick out of convenience? Didn’t wear a mask around people at home? Etc, etc..
This only supports the inevitable fact that every option was wildly imperfect.
Of course a lot of folks immediately jumped to hysterical extremes, but the experts merely claimed masks were the easiest tool at our disposal; that they were pretty good at preventing the oral spread of viral particulate, not so good at preventing inhalation. People who wore masks out of fear weren't lowering the risk factor for themselves as much as they were lowering the risk for others, including the maskless. The surgeons who wear masks during every operation aren't worried about getting cooties from the patient.
Without compliance, it really was a wash. Option 1 was to just say "f#&% it." In hindsight it might not have made much difference. Others likely have evidence it saved thousands of lives.
Also, the "mandates" were all over the place; decisions made by individual businesses and localities. We had high schools three miles away from each other with completely different COVID policies. Some towns never closed down their restaurants or bars. Meat-packing plants and assembly line operations courageously forged ahead in those early days until too many people started dropping dead.
And of course you prefer the insinuation that mask mandates were an over-reach by U.S. Democrats, but nations and governments as diverse as Brazil, Russia, Peru, Sweden, India, Mexico, Germany and the UK were hammered by COVID and none of them arrived at the magic balance of public safety and personal freedom you want to pretend was obvious from the beginning. Asian nations have a lot more experience with pandemics than the U.S., and zero of them rejected masks as ineffective.
Are mask mandates inefficient when a significant portion of the population sees them as a political litmus test, or don't believe the science because a conservative ideology is working overtime to discredit the government and science itself as elitist?
You got me there.
