Thanks george76!
The original idea of masking as I understood involved three factors, each of which has not proved to be decisive in the virulence of COVID-19:
1) Immune system naiveté- The virus is new, but not so new as to kill off large segments of the population.
2) Fomite Transmission- The risk is considered to be “very low” even according to the CDC.
3) Aerosols- By which I mean long range small droplet transmission. Not happening.
Even if all three factors were in fact as bad as feared, the only purpose of the mask and distancing was to “flatten the curve.” There was supposed to be a way to not overwhelm the hospital system. Remember the NYC hospital ship? Remember Franklin Graham’s emergency hopital? Nobody thought we wouldn’t need it.
The critical factor in transmission is inoculum! That means you get it by close contact for a prolonged time because you gotta get enough of it at once. I cannot say that masks make it worse, but somebody needs to look at that.
Here is the latest I have on inoculum:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7686757/
Masks come up in the last paragraph before the conclusion. They are NEVER going to say masks don’t work, but at least they can imagine better strategies that actually will help.