I don't disagree with you, but the risk reduction they provide is so little that you may as well call them "useless".
You should go buy a lotto ticket! There's a chance you could win!
You should go buy a lotto ticket! There's a chance you could win!
Mask wearing was a law in SF during the 1918 epidemic and saved many lives. Once again, history is forgotten.
I think the "useless" part actually refers to the the fact that the public at large wont be wearing masks so a few people wearing masks might protect themselves, but does nothing to alleviate the overall spread of the virus.
(Compounding the confusion is that a reusable rubber respirator is also called a ‘half mask’.)
If media can be pushed to destigmatize wearing of masks and stigmatize not wearing of masks, then this (combined with starting manufacturing large quantities of masks) would alleviate the overall spread of the virus in the post-containment mitigation phase, in which many countries are right now.
The lottery ticket analogy does not work well. I'm reminded instead of the scenes in the Chernobyl mini-series where individuals are sent into unknown dangers- dangers that are impossible to see, difficult to understand, and require conscious thought and effort to avoid. Resources are scarce and authority figures do not have sufficient information to keep everyone as safe as they should. Whether you survive or not comes down to both luck (whether your place and duties precluded you from any other option) and ignorance (whether you picked up a chunk of radioactive graphite with your bare hand). Using PPE is an effort to counteract your ignorance.