If you wear a mask, you do so in the belief that you are protecting yourself (and others) from COVID-19. So, then, why do you care if I don't wear a mask? Doesn't your mask protect you? If it does, my not wearing a mask may irritate you because you resent my assertion of freedom, my obvious lack of respect for government and medical authorities and my alleged selfishness, but there would be no rational medical – that is, "science-based" – reason for your objecting to my not wearing a mask. And if masks protect us and others, why have people been refused the right to visit a loved one as he or she lay dying alone? Why couldn't a person – wearing the same mask a doctor, nurse or any health care worker wears when entering your parent's room – enter that room? There are two possible answers: One is it's a tacit admission that masks are essentially useless. You were prevented from visiting your dying father because the hospital believes your loved one or others in the hospital might contract the virus from you, even though you were wearing a mask. Which means those running the hospital don't believe masks actually work. The other is that the medical establishment and lay authorities have abandoned elementary human decency in the name of AOC, or "Abundance of Caution." Forcing hundreds of thousands of people to die alone will go down as one of the cruelest policies ever adopted by American medical and political authorities.