the asymmetry of masks

I had wondered about that asymmetry of masks myself,  I assumed there was some kind of physical explanation, but one did not readily appear.  I think I have a rough explanation of it though.  When you cough or talk through a mask you are expelling large globules of mist containing the virus which are caught in the fine netting of the mask.  If you weren't wearing a mask those globules would disperse in the air becoming smaller globules, globules so small that they could slip through the fine netting of the mask on the person you were speaking to or coughing towards.  It's not that cut and dried, some tiny globules can get through a mask, and some tiny globules will be stopped by a mask, but in the end the exhaler is much less likely to be spreading the virus and the inhaler is less likely to catch the virus. 

I'll wager those Walmart employees were not happy about the customers not wearing masks, but didn't want to say anything for fear that they would lose their jobs.  This is one of the reasons the less wealthy who have to work at Walmart are dying at a higher rate than those who have nicer jobs that they can do from home.

A reason for wearing the mask that came up pretty often in my research, was to show solidarity, to show that you are taking the pandemic seriously.  It does make a certain amount of sense.  If you are checking out customers at the Walmart, you can be pretty sure that the guy wearing the mask is more likely to be washing his hands a lot and isolating more, and less likely to be packing the virus and slipping it to you on his card or his cash.

But that solidarity part bothers me.  What if I  am concerned about the pandemic, and it makes sense to me that wearing a mask will help bring the pandemic down and I would like to do my part to end this thing sooner rather than later, but I am also a Trumpist, and I see that that great man never wears a mask, and that almost all of the anti Trumpers do, do I want to wear a mask like them?  Do I want to don the uniform of the enemy tribe?

The notices in the elevators that used to announce meetings of various committees and goings on about the building now carry only corona stuff, getting a little more restrictive with every new notices.  Last week the notice that you should wear a mask even in the hallways, even just skipping down to check your mail went up.  Yesterday a stronger message was posted about wearing a mask all the time and noting that there had been some refusals resulting in, well I don't know, some kind of ruckus.  I was surprised, here in the genteel towers of a brightly blue city in a blue state.