[freeandfreezing]

Here is an article you can read to start to educate yourself on the difficulty of preventing viral infection by using masks. More than 20% of the nurses in the study exposed to influenza, a virus similar in size to the COVID-19 virus for purposes of mask efficacy, were infected regardless of whether they used a surgical mask or an N-95 respirator.

So for a similar virus, when exposed to influenza, the N-95 respirator is less than 1% better than the surgical mask, and both fail more than 20% of the time. They help, since perhaps the unmasked nurse would have been at even higher risk, but the study did not test that hypothesis.

[mac_truck]

I was standing in line at Kohls this afternoon, when the young man handling returns suddenly and quite involuntarily sneezed.

Yes, he managed to partially turn his head first, but there is no question that without a mask his sneeze would have covered a much wider radius...including the customer standing directly in front of him.

Regardless of how difficult it is to prevent viral transmission in a sustained hospital setting, there is no question that even a minimal face covering reduces transmission of in common everyday situations like the one I described above.