He misses the point of wearing a mask which is to reduce the chance of infecting others rather than catching it yourself....
Read and weep then if you think your expertise eclipses his.... https://backtoreason.medium.com/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809
This has long been the unsolved problem with the communication of science. It has inherent uncertainties, is never finished with it's investigations and experimentation, and there's usually disagreement to some extent. The public want headlines, facts, absolutes. People don't like or trust that there's often incomplete knowledge and evolving understanding.
Have to say I don’t get the criticism of Neil Ferguson on COVID (ignoring for these purposes his rather unusual domestic arrangements).
Simples! He was wildly wrong on BSE, Foot & Mouth, Swine Flu etc. You would laugh him off the track as a tipster. He appears to be a mathematician who doesn’t want his models tainted by inconvenient adjustments in his assumptions that stuff his multiples. His Covid model fails the first sniff test by assuming no prior immunity. Epidemiologists independent of Imperial College put it at about 30-34%. Add in about 30% infected since and you approach the infective equilibrium referred to as ‘herd immunity’. If that is true, it renders a vaccine largely superfluous to a now endemic virus (perhaps not all) which is a massive loss of opportunity to some commercial interests. I give not a stuff about his domestic antics but the hypocrisy fails sniff test No 2. You should read Mike Yeadon on his time as Pfizer’s Head of Respiratory Research and the arrival of modellers with no clinical realities factored in.
And then there's that pesky "confirmation bias". People are inclined to favor information that supports their prior beliefs or values.
You have to admit there's a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from going into a bank with a mask on....
Yup, wandered into the bank and checked out the security cameras. Quietly mocked to myself the baldy exposed in the overhead shot. Then I nodded.......
You're absolutely right, Sandi. We're all prone to it and some countries seem to have gone mad because it's running rampant, particularly in political settings. There's no shame in checking something we think we know and perhaps finding out we're wrong. That's education!