The masks aren’t fine enough to trap germ particles coming in. There are such masks (n95) but these are more expensive, and require fitting and training to use. The off the shelf masks people are using do nothing for healthy people.
The problem of 3-ply masks is that 10-25% of the air you inhale leak from the side/nose, bypassing the filter. n95 mask "fixes" the problem by tight(er) fitting, not by additional filtering layers.
I keep hearing this but don't understand. What exactly needs training?
See https://www.bu.edu/ehs/files/2014/08/N95-Respirators-Trainin...