They just as obviously have minimal value in preventing healthy people from contracting the virus through inhaling such droplets. We aren't talking about virus particles - which don't, as in the common mosquito/chain link fence analogy, fly around in the air by themselves.
Bottom line is that there is no scientific basis for mask mandates. They can't even agree on whether asymptomatic patients are infectious - if they are not then masks have no value to the healthy at all.
But here’s what doesn’t make sense ...
We have to wear masks because (we’re repeatedly told) the virus is “highly contagious” ... but we also now know that the virus arrived here in Nov./Dec., and the mask-wearing and shutdowns didn’t begin until March ...
So - for 3+ months everybody was going around, no mask, socializing at Christmas, New Year’s, football playoff parties, etc. ... but if the virus is really so “highly contagious”, then most people have already had it
Remember that really super-bad “flu” you had last winter, like nothing you ever had before? That was corona.
So the current mask hysteria is unjustified and useless. But it suits the agenda of certain people and groups, so it continues.
(a little common sense goes a long way to cutting through the current BS)
I don’t know.
Keep an eye on Vietnam for the next 2 weeks.
The country had Covid shut down. Then apparently, some Chinese brought the disease in via smuggling, or some such.
The country is big on masks, this week mandating masks in Hanoi, and almost closing Da Nang.
This version of Covid is supposed to be much quicker to infect than the original version.
Keep an eye on Vietnam. If masks work, they should control this pretty quickly.
If not, then maybe not so much.
But Vietnam did beat it once already, just saying.
I agree with your main point, but nothing prevents individual virus particles or groups of particles from becoming airborne without a substrate or remaining airborne when the substrate evaporates. I think you will find this article interesting: