Masks are going to be with us for a long time. They're annoying, but better to wear them and have things come back somewhat to normal, than to not, prolonging all of this. Even in the absolute best case imaginable with a vaccine, only a fraction of the world will be vaccinated in a year's time.

Whether masks stay or not depends on the public opinion (at least in democracies). Living in a place that introduced them early and extensively (they were compulsory everywhere in public), I can see major shift in public opinion after several months and the support for mask-wearing diminished. In the beginning, many (most) people wore them even before they became compulsory. These days I see people mostly ignore the rule wherever it's not enforced. Few months ago, social media was full of people advocating for masks, these days I see most people take them off at the earliest opportunity and if someone talks about masks, it's all about getting rid of them. I believe the shift in public opinion will be similar in western Europe.

Austria is getting rid of face masks in shops from mid-June (they remain compulsory in some settings, such as services, but I hope that will be discontinued soon too). Slovakia just announced that face masks will no longer be compulsory outside and in offices, although they remain recommended. As another update, Slovakia will no longer enforce social distancing in restaurants and bars, there will no longer be a required spacing between tables (although government still recommends 2 meters) and it was announced that clubs should be allowed to open soon.

I don't think for one second that it's going to be 5 years. Even if some places cling onto the restrictions, there will be many places which get back to normal quickly and the market will vote with its feet. If your usual destinations are closed or heavily restricted, there will be plenty of other places to go.

If there's any place where it makes sense to wear a mask it's in a cramped and crowded place like a plane. If outbreaks start getting traced back to flights, then it's going to be bad for air travel. So for those who want to get back to normal, I'm not sure that this is the best fight to have.

Actually, the plane is one of the better places to be given the air circulation and filtration. Perhaps not if you got a guy next to you / behind you all snuffly, but that's 3 folks. Gets better if the middle seat is vacant.

It's stuffy places (like offices!) with no air circulation and lots of talking/yelling people that you gotta watch out for.

As far as I'm concerned, having to wear masks excludes possibility of "normal". I expect normal to include being able to breathe. Plane is a fairly safe enviroment, there is very little mingling between the people, no one is facing each other, there are HEPA filters, rather quick air circulation, etc. I can think of several places I've been to in the last two weeks, where I've encountered far more people and no one was forced to wear a useless piece of cloth on their face. During my last visit to pub, I've been in close contact with far more people than I'd been on a plane.

Well, each to their own. At this point it seems that most "open" / least restrictive destinations in Europe are within my driving distance anyway. I miss a more substantial change of enviroment, but it will have to wait until airlines stop treating me like a bio hazard.

So far, due to luck, testing constraints, and highly infectious nature of COVID-19, airlines have avoided blame as an environment where COVID-19 has been transmitted (they are of course responsible for the international spread of the disease).

BUT, with contact tracing and testing in place in some countries, as well as air travel starting again it is only a matter of time before super spreader events are identified that occurred on airplanes.

By way of comparison, we know SARS was spread on airplanes:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa031349
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...9a97d8862a.png
Lastly, there are health exceptions to wearing a mouth and nose covering if you cannot breath easily with one. If you are healthy and cannot breath easily then I suspect you are wearing the wrong type of mask. I predict that wearing a mask will likely become a pre-requisite for flying (hopefully only until the pandemic is over) in the same way as wearing a seat-belt is (i.e. the announcement would be "when not eating or drinking, you are required to cover your mouth and nose"). Of course some people won't follow this (as today with seat-belts), some people will complain, but the vast majority of sensible reasonable people will follow the instructions and everyone will be safer for it.