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Notes -
I don't think it's obvious outdoor mask mandates don't work for any disease and mask type. It is obvious that, given the experience we have now, or even after a bit of experimentation in 2020, that [covid, cloth masks] or even [covid, n95s] outdoors aren't useful, but the way diseases spread can take many forms, and such a strong claim isn't really justified by intuition from 5th grade science. Maybe some other disease has such small particles / high virality that not wearing n95s outdoors does lead to it spreading more.
Claiming that not understanding physical "something can't be created out of nothing" laws is directly connected to left-wing economics is too strained. Many prominent physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers who certainly understood that were left-wing radicals in their day.
Also, such intuition (is this really different from knowledge) using physics/math/biology/chemistry/statistics/<...> may come easier to 130+ iq people, and that school doesn't impart this in the general populace, many of whom don't understand algebra, doesn't necessarily say that much about school.
That school teaches many people math/physics/biology is important, and to much more than teaching general intuition - it, together with university education in specific technical fields, creates most of our our mechanical engineers, research mathematicians, semiconductor fab techs, etc. A select few would self-study their way to it anyway, but most wouldn't. That's a flaw in 'just don't do education, it's bad' cases, although it doesn't make the current form of education any better.
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