Just as no amount of flat temperature data would dissuade the climate cult, so no amount of flat (or even negative!) data on mask effectiveness will shake the faith of the Church of Covid. Beautiful Theories cannot be disproven by mere information.
The "Covid emergency" will never be over. It will mutate and seek out new missions when this particular virus threat abates, repurposing its funding and clinging to its power. They're already talking up the "next pandemic" and how we must forever remain at DEFCON 2 to be ready.
Masks are now a visible and tangible symbol of an entire agenda. Its champions will use every means possible to force you to wear them forever, including corporate pressure, their new favorite tool. Expect commercial mask requirements to linger, especially big corporations.
True believers, meanwhile, will wear their masks with grim determination and scowl ostentatiously at everyone who refuses to join them. It's a new virtue signal that will not go away any time soon. Mask scolding is a quick, easy, heady power rush.
All the while, studies will keep rolling out that masks don't help, and might even hurt. That was fairly common medical knowledge before the pandemic began, but it was aggressively suppressed when masks became a political symbol, and a totem for people desperate to DO SOMETHING.
It was not irrational to say "maybe masks will help, let's give them a shot," but oceans of data are in now. The shot was taken, and proved minimally helpful at best. Continued worship of masks is psychological and political, not scientific.
The psychological benefit also is not irrational. If masks make people feel better during a time of desperation, that's a real benefit. Putting it bluntly, if masks help us escape from the destructive insanity of lockdowns, they're a small price to pay.
But if we're supposed to be a "science-based" society that prides itself on a commitment to pure reason, we have to be honest about what studies are telling us about the practical value of masks, and begin separating practical merit from political/religious symbolism.
The worst of all worlds is a regime of tribal superstition that cloaks itself in the mantle of science and reason - faith that pretends to be knowledge, so that heresy can be condemned as ignorance. We must aggressively thwart the formation of secular political religions.
We already have far too many state religions in our supposedly secular nation, increasingly enforced by armies of the faithful marching under corporate banners. We don't need the Church of Covid to become another permanent element of the Beltway communion. /end
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