Are masks a part of health theater

[Burning Paradigm]

I agree. Others compared masks to helmets and I think it was Tactical Turtleneck who made the argument that increased healthcare costs are justification for those mandates. I would put helmets into your first category.

Fair enough, I might have misunderstood or made assumptions about your position, and I apologize. I can concede increased healthcare costs alone don't provide rationales for the regulation of behaviors of policies. However, in the case of mask mandates, it's not just a matter of solely increased costs, but also the speed at which the costs of the healthcare system increases and capacity decreases. As a public health major, one of our little axioms is "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."