> Josh, I recommend that you do even just some basic research into this topic. It's quite complex, and I can't do it justice here.
I have.
> For example, people with mobility and other issues involving their fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and ears can find it quite difficult, or even impossible, to put on, to wear, or to remove a mask.
This is minimal and solvable. If someone needs assistance putting on a mask, they need assistance with other daily activities and so can get that assistance as well.
> Masking can cause problems for those with hearing-related issues, as it can make it difficult to hear the muffled voices of others, as well as making lip-reading impossible.
This is also solvable, with for example clear masks that are used in speech therapy contexts.
> Masking can also aggravate respiratory and cardiovascular-related medical issues.
This is not true, there's no support for this in the literature. While full-face respirators can reduce airflow, facemasks like those commonly worn and recommended don't decrease airflow or O2 intake significantly enough to matter. As a rule of thumb, if you cannot breath through a mask either the issue is psychosomatic or you should be wearing a plastic face mask that provides you supplementary oxygen, because you are not sufficiently able to breathe on your own.
> In jurisdictions where accessibility is considered important, the forced masking bylaws or legislation typically had accessibility-related exemptions, because masking does cause severe accessibility problems for many people.
Please cite them.
> Among the most egregious were when exempt individuals were denied service, reasonable accommodation, and in some cases employment.
Please cite them. What is a reasonable exemption from mask wearing if a building requires all present to wear masks?
> A less-visible aspect to this very real threat of harassment was how some people just stopped participating in society as much as possible, even at the cost of financial, psychological, and social harm to themselves.
Lots of people do this for many reasons, for example the large swaths of people who (rightly or wrongly) still feel unsafe going out and about because of the dangers of Covid and the fact that most areas in society don't mask. Personally, I feel those people, even most with immunicompromisations, are overstating the risks associated with involvement in society. By the same token, I think the people you describe are overstating the risks of masking. I cannot conclusively say whether one faces a greater real issue than the other. What I can say is that masks to provide conclusive benefits, so the imagined risks of people who fear them are less of an issue to me than the imagined risks of people who overestimate the dangers of covid and other airborne infectious diseases.
> Perhaps you were spared the worst of this based on where you happen to live, and luckily didn't have to experience the costs of masking yourself.
Given where I live and my social circles, I and those around me masked far more aggressively and for far longer than the majority of the united states. I'll reiterate that there have been few to know real negative impacts from these policies.