>>414
sure, that's an example (a minor one) of how totally out of whack people's common sense has gotten: masks do serve to reduce the rate of spread of the disease but that's a stochastic phenomenon, the risk reduction is a probabilistic one and needs to be analysed in large enough populations to observe significant statistical significance
but as I said that's a relatively minor example of paranoia, after all masks do offer a certain degree of benefit and, well, they aren't too much of a burden anyway. but just compare that with the absolute insanity of suddenly halting dead on its tracks a major part of the economy of entire countries for fucking months with no more justification other than "those guys over there are doing it too" (and secretly, "and we are too afraid of the backslash in twatter/faceberg/etc if we didn't and we wish to maintain a favorable public image above all"), which is what happened around april or so during the peak of the hysteria (at least in europe). even countries in the global south that at the time were still close to summer climate started to close down schools, businesses and public services
I reached my conclusion then: the western civilisation doesn't have long to go if the pusillanimous scum in mass media and government are allowed to continue to hold this much degenerative power over the minds of the stupid masses. the core of the problem here is the ease with which masses of imbeciles, across national borders, be them part of government or governed, endowed with the right to suffrage, are controlled by the bullshit that some globohomo silicon valley company decides to push to their "smart" devices.