Wearing a mask makes a statement

That statement is: “I care about my fellow citizens.”

OTOH, not wearing a mask also makes a statement

That statement is: “I’m a self-centered idiot.”

The math is pretty simple. Suck it up for a few months and get the transmission rate below 1 (translation: brush fire vs. current raging inferno). Or go unmasked and rant about “personal liberty” while tens of thousands of people needlessly die.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has estimated that if there were 95% compliance with mask-wearing in the United States, there would be about 33,000 fewer deaths from COVID-19 between now and Oct. 1, 2020. To put this in perspective, in 2018 (the last year for which data are available), there were 16,214 homicides in the country. Between 2001 and 2019, there have been a little fewer than 2,500 active military personnel killed in Afghanistan. Both of these are tragic losses of life, yet both are dwarfed by the number of lives that could be saved in just three months with near-universal mask wearing.

From this article on Omaha.com

If your moral compass is broken, here’s the “save the economy” capitalist argument for masks:

Wearing a mask doesn’t just save lives, it can also help people save money. If the United States were to mandate that all Americans wear masks, it would save the country from deleterious economic lockdowns that would reduce the gross domestic product by 5%, or about $1 trillion, according to an analysis by Goldman Sachs. 

From this CBS News article

And please spare me the “government overreach” argument. During World War II, all Americans had to make sacrifices to fight the enemy – food, gas, even clothing was rationed. We’re at war again, against an invisible enemy. Wearing a mask is patriotic, Bubba. It’s a minor, temporary inconvenience that saves lives AND saves jobs. So get one on your face and get over it.

“Good Lord, people, you have to wear a seatbelt. You have to have a driver’s license. You can’t drive while you’re drunk,” she said. “There are all sorts of rules and regulations that you have to follow every single day. This is not some infringement on anybody’s rights.”

Karen Keith, commissioner in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, in this NYT article