Of course doctors and nurses have had to wear them throughout their shifts, their situation is much more risky and you can't social distance when dealing with patients.

I think that with your reasoning, which is fine and perhaps all shop workers should wear them, but if so would it then not be logical for pubs and restaurants to remain closed since you can't eat or drink while wearing a mask?

People suffer in a failing economy too and it seems to me that all we can do is the best that we can while trying to get back some kind of normality. Just as worrying is delayed treatments for other illnesses like cancer while the world focuses mainly on the pandemic.

Every individual death is a tragedy and Covid19 is a particularly nasty illness for some who can suffer long term negative health effects even if they get through it, but other flu outbreaks have caused higher than average excess winter deaths. Average is apparently about 26,000 but in winter 2014/15 there were 44,000 excess winter deaths due to flu when the winter vaccine wasn't very effective. Deaths from covid 19 are higher yes, but not an order of magnitude higher and no higher than flu deaths back in the 50s and 60s (I think but would have to check on that).

So what do we do? We can't stay in lockdown forever. I will wear a mask where required and I won't be going to pubs in my town now full of tourists getting drunk and unable to social distance. Tourists are a big risk imo. Not a single supermarket employee here has had covid 19 since the start although several had similar symptoms (as did I) and were quite ill back in December and January. We are told that must have been a different flu but I'm not convinced.