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Isn’t this a contradiction?

“Masks don’t work” and then in the next paragraph “mostly you get COVID when not wearing [a mask]”

I think this works like condom statistics, where the statistic is that they are 98% effective, but that statistic includes people who go "we normally wear condoms, but we didn't that one time and she got pregnant" as a condom failure.

So basically, the masks are effective, but people take the masks off around family and friends and if one of their friends or family has COVID they will pass it on during the unmasked time.

Only if you truncate the sentence as you have done.

Can you help me understand how “catching COVID while not wearing a mask” is meaningfully different from “catching COVID from a family member while not wearing masks” in the context of whether masks are effective in preventing the spread of COVID? Seems an irrelevant distinction to me.

I think:

You’re not catching covid in situations where you’d typically wear a mask (regardless of masking), rather where you typical don’t wear a mask, like from family member.

I’m not really saying I agree, but I think that is the context.

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