Do you have a significant other in your life? Do you have children? Or parents? Or a family? A dog? Maybe you have a sports team you really, deeply care about and are emotionally invested in. All of these things require love, attention, affection and personal attachment.

Well none of it compares to the love the media has for Japan's mask usage. It's not possible for normal people to maintain a level of love that comes anywhere close to the unending adoration media outlets have for crediting Japan's mask culture and compliance with a perceived level of COVID success. It's remarkably, unbelievably powerful.

So let's go through some of the cringe-inducing hysterics and provide some context to what happened in the months afterwards, shall we?

March 31, 2020

We begin with a very early adopter of the premature obsession: National Review and their March 31st article rushing to credit masks in Japan even before the CDC did their evidence-free flip flop in early April.

Masks matter because COVID-19 spreads through droplets. The primary way a healthy person is exposed is by coming into physical contact with viral particles contained in the saliva or respiratory secretions of a person with the virus — including one without symptoms. Particles are released when someone infected sneezes, clears his or her throat, laughs, eats or speaks. Droplet spread is not the same as aerosol spread, and evidence suggests that, unlike measles, COVID-19 viral particles do not remain airborne for long enough to create a "cloud" of infectious gas. (The risk of aerosol spread is high mostly for medical professionals, who may come in prolonged close contact with infected patients during procedures.)