Bzzt. (Mostly) wrong answer. Most virus particles that are emitted from people are attached to spittle or similar excretions much larger than 1 micron. And a “good” mask will block those secretions from going all over into an environment that an infected person is in (grocery store, mall, restaurant, etc).
You’re correct, however, that most masks won’t block virus particles that are say, exhaled and NOT attached to a larger molecule. But if we can reduce say, 70-90% of virus particles, it’s a hell of a lot better than ZERO percent, which is what you get when people argue about and ignore the science behind masks.
“Most virus particles that are emitted from people are attached to spittle or similar excretions much larger than 1 micron.”
While I agree with the size science that only works in labs and text books.
In the real untrained world that I have observed as I have sit and watched John Q Public enter and exit businesses it doesn’t work out that well.
JQP takes mask that has been saturated by infected snot and grabs it with their bare hand thereby now contaminating their hand that then grabs a door handle, cart, or product on the shelf and then the contaminates wait for the next victim to arrive. JQP puts infected snot mask and stuffs it in their pocket once in vehicle and repeats the above process all over again in the next store.
Mask for the general sheeple public are super spreaders in my opinion, but your mileage may vary.
The generally ineffective placebo masks are “better than nothing”. But not much.