During the course of the current COVID-19 pandemic, facemask wearing has become a point of massive contention with many authorities insisting on their use by people in public places and even issuing fines for people caught not doing so. In some cases this has led to ugly and often unnecessarily violent confrontations between members of the public and sometimes with police.

Meanwhile, the science on the issue has seemed to shift so that at one time people in positions of authority were saying they were unnecessary and even inappropriate for general public to use and then the same authorities shifting to recommending them and even making them mandatory by all.

In this connection, a section of recent ABC News article dated 9 September entitled “Majority of Australians support mandatory face masks in public places, survey reveals” caught my eye: