Yes yes, I know. Just let me explain.
Masks DO help prevent the range particles can travel when you breathe. I'm not arguing that. The fact is, however, they're useless in comparison to the ACTUAL champions of prevention.
And that would largely be hygiene. I'm willing to bet 99% of you reading this do not clean your fingernails properly while washing your hands. Which is fine, THAT'S how good soap is. Doing it poorly is orders of magnitude better than not doing it all.
Is the same true of masks? Absolutely not. If you don't wear a mask properly, it's useless. It gets worse with specialised gear, like the N95s. You need to be trained on how to fit, test and adjust that. Have a beard? Not gonna work. Small leak out the top? Nope, it's buggered.
You ever notice how developing nations struggle with higher infant mortality rates, caused by preventable communicative diseases like cholera? It's because they don't wash their hands with soap. Soap is literally a life saver [0]. There's a damned good chance it's saved you a nasty infection, if not your life, directly or otherwise.
It's strange to me we understand why gloves aren't effective, but somehow that logic gets lost when masks pop up. If you don't know how to stop yourself from contaminating your environment, you're really not getting anything from wearing a mask. Or gloves. Or scrubs.
China is a fantastic example of this. They just ignored the whole "human rights" problem and went straight to welding people into their own homes [1]. Highly effective. Conversely, they'd been wearing masks for a long time because of their air pollution. Clearly not very effective. (The point here is the behavior and the objective is more important than the mask).
Here's what we should be focusing our energy on:
1. Social Distancing
2. Wash your hands properly [2]
3. Coughing etiquette
4. And then, finally, PPE including masks. If you don't know how to use gloves properly, then don't waste your money (because we all seem to forget economics is also a problem to solve here).
JUST focusing on masks won't cut it. Rather focus on JUST washing your hands then. You will see a much larger return on investment there. That evidence is also irrefutable. Compare the rate of death from communicable diseases in areas where washing with soap is prevalent to areas where it is not. SARS-CoV-2 has a lipid bi-layer, so soap will destroy it.
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2587156/
[1]: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1703503427818
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLIFT9xoWSQ the key bit here is scrape your nails against your hands when they're full of soap, so that the soap gets UNDER your nails too. Germs are tiny, and everywhere. So get em good