I hope it's not. There's a lot of non-verbal communication we miss when wearing masks. It's not as bad as how tone can be hard to communicate on the internet, but it's still not as good as being able to read someone's facial expressions.
I really hope it was satire but I can’t tell anymore. If not, I guess now we add “dehumanization” to the list of horrible effects of wearing a little piece of cloth on your face. I really don’t get why so many people are willing to die on this particular silly hill.
I don't have super strong passions here. But reverting to fashion norms seems pretty appropriate, once it's safe. If it's not safe now, when would it be?
People do take a lot of cues from facial expressions and at least in "the West" we rarely wear face coverings. So there's definitely some (mild?) cost to wearing the mask, too.
I will say this, though -- organizations that insist on compelling others to wear masks outdoors are terribly misguided.
>organizations that insist on compelling others to wear masks outdoors
Which organizations might those be? State and local governments?
At least in the US, there are more than 50 states/territories, hundreds of cities and more than 3,000 counties. Each of which has separate authority for public health issues.
That said, many (perhaps most?) of those entities have been following the CDC guidelines. Those have now changed. As such. it seems likely that many of those 3,000+ entities will change their policy prescriptions.
> Which organizations might those be? State and local governments?
No, thankfully I think they're probably making mostly good recommendations there. I'm thinking of stuff like outdoor soccer - parents are asked to wear masks in a big open field with no crowds.
I think people are purposely under-emphasizing the amount of facial communication still possible with a mask on. Never mind that all these dehumanization scenarios conveniently assume people have somehow lost all ability to utter any sort of noise.
If someone wants to continue wearing a mask for a reason with no harmful externalities (e.g. allergies, privacy), respect their personal freedoms and let them.
