Fauci’s prescription for perpetual masking dovetails with the guidance out of Joe Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Masks can help reduce your chance of #COVID19 infection by more than 80%,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky recently informed the public, but she didn’t stop there. “Masks also help protect from other illnesses like common cold and flu.” Masking in public, she suggested, should be part of a daily hygiene regimen like washing your hands.

All this might just be a species of prudence if it wasn’t contributing to a psychological orientation that can no longer gauge relative risk. Indeed, it’s a persuasion that rejects the compartmentalization of relative risk entirely.

“The pandemic is potentially driving another national crisis related to its effects on behavioral health,” a recent Government Accountability Office report to Congress began, “with people experiencing new or exacerbated behavioral health symptoms or conditions.” Among the many “behavioral” maladies plaguing the public as we approach the pandemic’s third year are depression, exhaustion, and hypochondria.