> ... don't exist. There is still not enough production of the types of masks that are known and shown to be effective.

Except:

Look at this analysis [1] of different country responses. Note that masking is only part of the strategy. Plenty of countries managed to effectively flatten the curve regardless of the availability of N95 masks (eg banning surgical mask exports, using effective contact tracing for quarantining and enforcing quarantine aggressively).

> Statistical analysis showed that the odds of infection were about half for people who reported wearing a mask in public compared with people who didn’t. (Results of this study are reported in terms of “odds ratios” which are related to relative risk, but not quite the same thing.) For people who wore masks “all of the time” (instead of “some of the time” or “most of the time”) the estimated effect was even more significant.

And

> A second part of the study sought to differentiate between cloth masks, surgical masks, and N95/KN95 respirators. Not unexpectedly, N95/KN95s were found to reduce the odds of infection compared with people who didn’t wear any mask. To me, the surprising thing is how effective they were, reducing the relative odds by 83%. Cloth masks and surgical masks were found to be less effective.

Who cares about absolutes. All masks provide some non-trivial amount of protection. Certainly better than not doing anything, especially if you do so consistently.

[2]

> even if you don’t wear it and are near someone with COVID you’re less likely to get it.
That was the hope, but it's not nearly as true as it needs to be.

Except I’ve been at parties where people with COVID showed up and no one else got sick. Not even the partner living with them. Now this was earlier so it was the first strain where maybe efficacy was better. And this is anecdotal and not quantitatively scientific. But certainly my anecdote seems to line up with the evidence I read (initially very good at stopping transmission and even today effective at it quite a bit but only for a few months). I don’t know what your threshold is for “as it needs to be”. Mine is “the healthcare system doesn’t fall apart”. AFAICT states and countries that are doing vaccinations effectively seem to be there even after abandoning masks and social distancing guidelines.

> Vaccines, especially vaccines that grossly fail to live up to expectations, aren't enough.

The grossness of the failure to live up to expectations is kind of mostly on you based on what expectations you chose to set I think. People were hopeful but I think realistically we knew it wasn’t going to be a silver bullet. A) we already had other variants by the time the vaccine started to get rolled out B) we didn’t try to stockpile the vaccine and roll it out “instantaneously” en masse. This gives the virus a perfect environment to evolve a resistance. We know this from evolutionary biology and I was fully expecting this result, so I don’t feel underwhelmed by the vaccine. To me I expected the vaccine to cut mortality rates for hospitals and reduce transmission rates for the virus. The latter may not be as effective but we know the former has been ridiculously effective. The amount of deaths is a fraction of the amount that test positive (and most positive cases aren’t even reported anywhere anymore). Same for the need for respirators.

> And keep up with producing and distributing N95 masks to actually solve the problem.

I see the problem. You’re again setting unrealistic expectations. N95 masks aren’t necessarily comfortable and people will avoid wearing them even when there’s a mandate. Half the time I saw people with masks covering just the mouth. And at the end of the day, your eyes and nose are likely other vectors for infection (eg studies that showed that people with glasses had a statistically significant lower rate of infection). And this all also ignores the problem of children playing together. What I’ve heard from people with kids is that kids are an amazing infection vector for the whole family for any disease, COVID included. I fully expect that even with an over abundance of masks, nothing actually meaningfully changes. You may disagree with that conclusion, but I think that’s a problem of expectation setting correctly. My expectations have generally been met by

mask efficacy: N95 would be nice, but any and all masks, especially if worn correctly and consistently, offer meaningful statistically significant reduction in transmission rates

and vaccines: evolution tells us the virus will have pressures from immune systems and vaccines so it’ll probably evolve (few viruses these days can be fully and permanent eliminated by a vaccine). However, I did think that transmission rates will be reduced at least a little bit (statistically appears true although with high enough variance that it can feel false) and more importantly death rate from COVID will plummet (also true).

And social distancing: as rules relaxed COVID rates spiked. But also most places generally paired this with vaccination rates so overall things stayed at least pretty flat or shrunk for the most part.

> Blatantly false. It's still killing several multiples of the flu. And now the flu is back on top of that.

Huh? Aren’t you basically agreeing with me then? To me, the flu returning and COVID running more rampant is a clear sign that people stopped masking and socially distancing (vaccination and natural immunity being roughly equivalent probably and cancel out I think). These two very effective behaviors that are kind of characteristic of a good COVID response, were kind of widely deployed in 2020 when the flu disappeared, and now have been largely abandoned as impractical for day to day living (Asian countries I think does this part better because of better social cohesion and previous experience with SARS).

> Probably true. People are stupid

This we mostly agree on. But also I think even a perfect COVID response sees it sticking around. It’s simply too virulent to not become endemic. Add onto the fact that people make mistakes, we don’t know what the 100% ideal response looks like, and this can’t be globally coordinated because each jurisdiction will enact their own policy which means 100% isn’t attainable anyway. Eg look at the countries that had the best COVID response and they’re still having to deal with neighbors and international travelers bringing variants back anyway.

[1] https://time.com/5851633/best-global-responses-covid-19/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johndrake/2022/02/04/the-real-w...