[Jim Noble]

Not to throw a wet blanket on all this "either-or" foolishness - but the question "do masks work" brings up the question, "What do you mean by 'work'"?

This virus has a TCID₅₀ - all viruses which infect animals do (I don't do plant virology, so I don't know about plants).

The TCID₅₀ for SARS CoV 2 is obviously less than measles or chicken pox. How much less remains to be seen.

So, anything that reduces the number of infectious particles that get out of someone else's respiratory tract and into yours will "work" if it reduces your uptake to below the Minimum Infectious Dose (MID), for which the TCID₅₀ is a reasonable surrogate.

The particle science people who generate <0.3 micron particles in rotating drums and blow them through various materials make a very strong case that masks don't "work". They made the same case for H1N1 flu, which led CDC to persist in the foolish recommendation that patient care for H1N1 required N95 masks when that was not true of any other form of influenza and proved not to be true for H1N1 either.

Every European country that adopted universal masking experienced a prompt and sharp decline in new SARS CoV 2 infections.

This is not an argument that we should or shouldn't pay the price of ANY intervention to prevent these infections, which, as many here point out, are usually mild.

But the claim that "masks don't work" is not true.

[bert]

Libertarian conservatives don’t like them

[dinodino]

Thank you for posting that, but good luck getting any of this lot to understand it—it’s like teaching calculus to goats.

[Yardstick]

Every European country that adopted universal masking experienced a prompt and sharp decline in new SARS CoV 2 infections.
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Interesting. Do you have a link for this?

I dislike the masks but to me it’s not hard to believe that they may have some benefit—probably not huge but also not nothing—especially in crowded situations.