Wearing a mask reduces COVID transmission by ~70% [1]. Adding vaccination on top of that probably reduces transmission to ~5% percent (just a guess). These are

Wearing a mask reduces COVID transmission by ~70% [1]. Adding vaccination on top of that probably reduces transmission to ~5% percent (just a guess). These are almost free interventions. In contrast, heart disease and cancer are much more expensive to mitigate. Regular exercise reduces the incidence of some heart diseases for the average person by about ~50% (estimating from the graph) [2]. We have no cheap way of reducing cancer incidence (besides vaccines for some viruses that cause cancer) — for example, intervening in cases of substance addiction is expensive. So even if your comparison was correct (it's not), how is it relevant? Are you trying to argue that the government should compel people to completely alter their lifestyles before they should mandate masks or vaccines? That makes no sense, because 1) preventing cancer requires mandating vaccines and 2) the interventions are orders of magnitude more expensive. Or, are you trying to suggest that the deaths of 650,000 people (in the US) are insignificant because there are some aggregate diseases that kill more? And therefore, because we can't stop all death, it's pointless to try to even mitigate some death? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... [2] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.0000048890.59383.8D https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.00000488...