Green says masks will be last to go

[malahini]

For me, itʻs less about being bothered by wearing them, than in having it be just a compulsory symbolic gesture.  People sit in restaurants talking and laughing maskless and then are told to wear a mask as they quickly enter and exit, mouths closed and in contact with others for about five seconds.  Yes, everyone wearing masks lowers the spread.  Lockdowns lower it even more.  But I donʻt think anyone wants to go back to that.
     In the beginning, when we didnʻt know much about the virus,  I fully supported mask wearing but I think weʻve all learned enough to know when we are putting ourselves in a risky situation.  And everyone has a different opinion of what is "risky".  I think itʻs time to let people make their own decisions.

Agree with all of this, but I'm not convinced anything worked except test/quarantine + contact tracing.

I would say there just isn't good evidence to support that either slowed the spread (or that they didn't to be fair), just that the best studies show negative or extremely limited effect. It's a shame we didn't actually run some really high quality clinical trials with near 100% masking considering we're the richest country on earth. Now we'll never know for sure.

Same goes for lockdowns, I think though that it is likely it may have helped in some rare situations, but generally they didn't and were ill-timed.

lots of tourist in town today, ridiculously masked up walking in open air.. I wonder what they were told before disembarking.

Yeah I saw some today, while locals walked around without any. I wondered the exact same thing too.