You just left out the rest of the sentence when you quoted “… but you’ll be glad to have them when it matters, or rather you will be missing them when it matters.”

And the point is most people don’t get in daily car accidents, and putting on your mask doesn’t necessarily mean you will be exposed to a disease that day. They are a type of safety precaution you sometimes use in situations where they don’t do anything, and that doesn’t mean that they were useless, it means no dangerous stuff happened.

That kind of danger, the kind that only gets you 1/10 times, is the kind people are famously bad at understanding. Our instincts say if someone survived doing something unharmed that it is safe, but sometimes riding in a car is safe and sometimes it isn’t. We get too easily comfortable with things we shouldn’t have because their consequences are delayed or inconsistent, and it happens everywhere.

Eta: I find it odd that the masks bother you more than the spreading disease that they are a “symptom” of. Personally, for over a decade now, I had hoped that sick people around here would start wearing medical masks on their own prerogative, like many other places/cultures already do. It feels on par with washing your hands to me. But then it became a political issue…