and yes masks are safe, people in Asia wear masks regularly and have for years (decades I think) during cold and flu season. Medical professionals have routinely worn masks for hours at a time for I don’t even know how long (but probably pretty much since we understood how sterilization worked). Masks have been around for a long time and we understand them - certainly a lot better than the long term effects of COVID.
I just wanted to add you are right about East Asia-in China and Japan (especially Japan), mask-wearing is
very common. In Japan, the temperatures in many areas (particularly urban areas such as Tokyo) tend to change
drastically, so mask-wearing is seen as the most prudent decision.
All of this is why, once mask-wearing was required to be mandatory due to the pandemic in the United States last year, I was shocked at so much of the backlash, which I'd like to add,
because I live in a red state (Alabama), I've seen it first thing. It is hard to overstate how commonplace on the political right anti-mask attitudes are, and I should also note that I have conservative Republican parents as well who have voiced their own similar viewpoints akin to this (although at least my mom seems to understand the seriousness of the virus), and like you said, this literally led this past October to a kidnapping and execution plot against the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. MI isn't even the only state, for instance, where the right has weaponized sentiment against mask mandates and other measures against the coronavirus-you may think California is a very liberal state (and it generally is, it hasn't voted for a Republican in a presidential election since George H.W. Bush in 1988), but Governor Gavin Newsom has literally been recalled over this, all in a GOP-led effort. While I doubt Newsom will be removed from office later this year (it's anywhere from August to November when the election will be), given CA's partisan leanings, it's still a testament to how much conservatives have resisted measures that, quite frankly, were only done in the name of safety.
And yes, I should note that some countries have basically gotten by with less mask-wearing, but there was simply more prudence in terms of how the virus was seen by the public. Conservatives here in the US have pointed at how mask-wearing hasn't exactly been commonplace in Sweden since last year when the COVID-19 pandemic got bad, but
it is, once again, hard to overstate the literal unwillingness of Americans to wear masks (not saying all, but a large amount of them, far more than it should be), something that pretty much doesn't happen in any other country (sans the United Kingdom, and even then, in the UK, I'd say it doesn't quite happen to the same extent). Two of the countries I consider to have handled the pandemic the best-South Korea and New Zealand-have largely done away with mask mandates,
but that's because their political leaders, such as South Korea's president, Moon Jae-in, and New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, managed to keep case numbers in their respective countries so low because they trusted science-and from an American perspective, while it seems like Joe Biden now trusts science, Donald Trump most assuredly did not and horribly mishandled the pandemic. (Just to clarify, South Korea and New Zealand are two of the four, thus half, of the countries I think handled the pandemic best, the others being Taiwan and Iceland, although the situation in Taiwan had worsened lately as Tsai Ing-wen, the Taiwanese president, had basically relaxed lockdown restrictions too early, nevertheless, it's still impressive Taiwan managed to keep its case numbers so low, as the pandemic first started in China, which neighbors Taiwan, which also meant Taiwan was almost certainly going to get cases of the coronavirus very soon after the pandemic's first reported cases in Wuhan)
Admittedly I'm getting more long-winded here than I expected, but the situation from country-to-country is very telling about case numbers and how masks and lockdown orders in general played a role. They were key in nations like South Korea, Taiwan, and New Zealand keeping their amounts of cases of COVID-19 low. On the other hand, as an example of a country in a contrasting situation, my boyfriend is from Brazil. The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro,
told people not to wear masks, not to social distance, and refused to do lockdown orders. Now, Brazil is one of two countries (the other being India, which had a similar situation)
being hit the worst by the pandemic with record numbers of deaths of Brazilians. The Brazilian
and Indian medical systems are both on the brink of collapse. Japan runs a similar risk because of the, in my opinion, imprudent decision to decide to
still host the Tokyo Summer Olympics (after the virus had already gotten them delayed from last year)
in the middle of a pandemic. It is hard to understate the consequences that come with one's decision making when you have a virus as contagious as COVID-19 spreading.
