I know I mostly already went but
Questions to be asking.
Masks
What are the costs?
Cost of purchase, annoyance of use (they are hardly "just there", usually hot, usually moist, might fog up your glasses), loss of visual signals (can't see you mouth and I can't hear, can't use non verbal communications, hard to see intent in some people -- covering your face is a fun one in a lot of countries/high trust societies), supply issues for those that do benefit from them (does that mean those a few months back claiming they were not necessary were either morons or merely misdirecting people such that the medics could have some), potential infection vector of their own (most are reused and not disposed of, or possibly worn only when "necessary" and be floating in the breeze the rest of the time, so in essence it might harbour some close to your airways)
What are the benefits?
There are two primary things it might do
1) Stop your disgusting fluids from going further into the world, or maybe in as great a volume.
2) Stop disgusting fluids from the world going into you.
There are two main professions that deal with masks. They are medics and those that work with airborne particles (grinding, painting, sanding, inspection work with mould spores, asbestos and what have you). I have trained the latter and spoken to many that trained the former -- despite knowledge of why something needs to be done it is still often something that has to be beaten into them aka it is a hard learned skill.
2) tends to warrant a more specialist type, and probably wants to be combined with eye protection too as that is almost as nice a infection location as inhaling it or shooting it up and also plenty visible. Seriously expensive and in some cases harder to wear.
1) To what degree does this have any effect? To what degree might it matter? Does 1000 particles matter more than 1 million if it is novel and my immune system has never seen it before? Said 1000 vs 1 million also becomes a debate when sneezing through a bit of cloth vs some actually well fabricated and properly worn device -- germs, viruses and airborne particles tending to be rather smaller than the weave of a standard count (or even high count) cotton cloth.
Likewise how far am I to stay away from someone? Varies about the place, and most of them seem far less than I can get if I gob a mouthful of coloured water, stand next to a wall, cough and see the results).
What if most people the people out and about are less likely to have serious negative outcomes where those that are in turn are sitting in their houses? What are said negative outcomes and should people care? Death and serious complication rates among certain groups (that being young and otherwise healthy, which is a sizeable chunk of the population) are rather low it seems (and we have enough numbers to be doing nice sampling on). Calculations are made about such things all the time regardless of what your healthcare payment method of choice is. What is the mutation risk that it becomes something truly fun (more exposure, more mutation)?
Is there a placebo effect? 100 years ago an infection was a serious serious thing. Today we have antibiotics so people can afford to be a lot more cavalier in their approaches, this may change if and when resistance picks up but different discussion there. If wearing a mask then sees many more people go out in the world and frequent shops under the potentially false delusion that they are protected (be it from 2) above or 1) being so widespread) does it mean more in the economy and not collapsing or collapsing as quick -- money may or may not the world go round via a root of all evil but a lack of it directly links to misery, suicide, abuse and neglect (sort yourself before you sort others, basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs there)
Are some of these then like counteracting a hurricane with a choicely aimed fart? Outside my house I don't have, certainly have not had a medic or government that presumably cares tell me to make, a little plastic tarp that I strip my clothes off and chuck into a bucket of bleach upon returning to then proceed for a scrub down, nor do I have an isolation setup in my house. If this was a nice big boy disease you do have such things.
Abortion.
What are the reasons people are against it?
The hand holding logic of some in the thread would be that if they value life (a debatable concept in the case of abortion) that presumably they should also value the lives of others and that a mask might do some good in helping others live.
This is a massive oversimplification from where I sit as there are both many other reasons someone might be against abortion, somewhat popular ones even if we are to go with real world stuff and not just logical debate or oddities, and because the efficacy of masks and the annoyances they could stand to be questioned or their practical efficacy* assessed. Not to mention if one was true then the reverse would presumably be in this case too and it does not seem logically dissonant to operate under the assumption that masks will save us all and still not care if someone scrapes a few cells (cells with no ability to suffer even) out of their womb (or has chemicals do it for them) because their efforts to prevent sperm from meeting egg (not sure why we might choose fertilisation or implantation as the point of no return with things before being just fine but it is a thing that is out there) failed for whatever reason, and in doing so saves themselves $400000 USD or more over the next 20 years (that is a small business, house, retirement fund, investment portfolio, fun hobby, or otherwise pretty decent life) plus a litany of other health, career and social effects that probably make that $400000 seem like small change (certainly the damages in the court case if a medic left a cancer ball or parasite in there because they could not be arsed and caused similar effects would be rather higher).
Equally "no effect on the world at large"... an unwanted child becomes an unwanted adult (not to mention reduces pool of existing adults) and that effects us all -- who do you think does most of the crimes and nastiness, means you can't learn all the fun stuff in schools, and generally means people get to act less openly to mitigate the effects of such things?
*if we are sticking with abortion related stats. Methods of prevention are available. Take a pill every day and you are good, use a condom correctly and also pretty good. Fail to take a pill (and over a population that is a reasonable number, and we know this from any number of drugs -- full course of antibiotics and all that) or fail to know how to use one (all those nice places that do abstinence only probably giving a nice sample) and the population wide efficacy drops quite notably.
