Luke, while I appreciate your goal, I'm afraid you're letting idealism get in the way of objective reality.

There is a steadily increasing body of objective scientific evidence that wearing a mask does little to protect you from catching COVID19 from others. It does, however, dramatically reduce the chance of them catching it from you.

It's not a matter of "just virtue signaling your side." The bothsiderism you're showing here, while I'm sure is well-intentioned, is misguided and dangerous.

If you walk down the street without a mask and smile at someone, it's not you respecting their view. It's you actively signaling "I don't know if I am going to get you sick and possibly have you die by not mildly inconveniencing myself, but I'm going to do it anyway because I don't care about your health."

The idea that "trying to not kill other people accidentally" is reduced to just tribal signaling is itself actively dangerous. Of course, that is actively being pushed by those who benefit from creating a deeper right/left divide, and it's working. And you, in this post, are buying into it, by saying the science doesn't matter and it's "just tribalism."

To Hive account@apshamilton below (above?), mask wearing is quite common and boring in China and many other East Asian countries that have spent more time dealing with disease outbreaks. The idea that it is "depersonalizing" or "undermining social cohesion" is simply not born out there, as many of those countries have much stronger social cohesion than the US does. And "make people look scary and ugly," yeah, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.

Wearing a mask is a form of social cohesion, because you're showing respect for your community members.

Bothsiderism isn't a solution to tribalism; it's just further undermining of the concept that objective fact and truth actually exist, which is one of the great sicknesses of our day.