So we now have the Mass Media's verdict on the question of wearing masks outdoors (which I have already said I have largely stopped doing while continuing to wear them always indoors when not at home):
Quote:
A mask outdoors?
On the issue of outdoor mask wearing, it helps to review a basic fact: There are few if any documented cases of brief outdoor interactions leading to Covid transmission. If you’re passing other people on a sidewalk or sitting near them on a park bench, the exposure of exhaled particles appears to be too small to lead to infection.
“Viral particles quickly disperse in outdoor air, and the risk of inhaling aerosolized virus from a jogger or passers-by are negligible,” my colleague Tara Parker-Pope writes, citing an interview she did with Linsey Marr of Virginia Tech. As Dr. Muge Cevik, an infectious-disease expert at the University of St. Andrews, says, outdoors is “not where the infection and transmission occurs.”
Still, why not try to eliminate even a minuscule potential risk and tell people to wear a mask at all times? Because that’s not an effective way to reduce overall risk. “I think the guidelines should be based on science and practicality,” Marr said. “People only have so much bandwidth to think about precautions.”
There are still important precautions to take, ones that are much more based in science than universal mask wearing. Unvaccinated people should wear masks when in close conversation with people outside their family — even outdoors — and should almost always wear a mask when indoors and not at home. Vaccinated people should continue to wear a mask in many indoor situations, to help contribute to a culture of mask wearing. It’s the decent thing to do when more than half of Americans still are not vaccinated.
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NY Times Morning newsletter
Now certain formers, for whom "the decent thing" means nothing, can chime in.