The purpose of studies is to demonstrate what might not be immediately obvious. For example, fish oil is well studied, and we know it has benefits for joint health. Now if you start taking fish oil supplements, will all your joints suddenly work like you’re 15 years old again? No. In fact, your joints might show little or no improvement at all. What the study says is that if you give fish oil supplements to 50,000 people, the overall joint health of that population improves significantly and you see fewer joint injuries and better joint function. But WITHIN that population, specific INDIVIDUALS will see very different results.
The studies tell us there are benefits overall, even when mom or dad or Aunt Susan say they can’t tell a difference. Those benefits improve quality of life for many people and reduce healthcare costs associated with joint issues.
Same with the masks. What the studies can tell us is that if people actually wear good masks and wear them properly in situations where they’re useful, there’s an overall benefit. Now, if someone is walking around Walmart while infected, it’s still entirely possible they’re infecting others even if everyone is wearing a good mask properly. But what the studies say is that if they would have infected 10 people in that Walmart, they might only infect 6 if people are wearing masks (particularly the infected individual). So it made no difference to the 6 who still got infected, but the four who didn’t aren’t spreading it to others, and those people aren’t spreading it to others, and so on. It’s a cumulative effect. And some of those who would have gotten infected who now aren’t will (statistically speaking) be among those who would die or suffer permanent injury from a fight with COVID-19.
The key take-away here is that wearing masks and social distancing are not magic and do not halt all infections. They simply reduce risk. They do so with minimal cost in terms of time, effort, or financial expense. But they’re only really useful when enough people are doing it properly. That means wearing a mask that’s actually effective (not a mesh mask, or a bandana, or something with holes cut in it, or a mask worn around the chin, etc.) and wearing it properly while indoors in public places. It isn’t going to help if only 10% of the people are actually following through with that consistently. Educating is a big part of that, and that’s sadly been as much a failure so far as most other public education run by the government.
Replying to: “The purpose of studies is to demonstrate what might not be immediately obvious.”
Your arguments, appear to support the continuance of mandated mask use based on studies that require people to be something other than people. It is exactly the same argument that supports socialism. If it’s done without regard to humans being humans, it just might work. You know, like an ant colony.
In the real world - masks are useless for protecting against covid 19 and they are useless for protecting from covid 19.