Your intuitions about airborne transmission are based on the idea of viruses being carried in relatively huge droplets of water, which due to their size and weight would rapidly fall to the ground. Hence constantly wiping surfaces clean, sneezing into the nook of your arm, mask mandates and lockdowns reducing transmission, etc.
This theory is inconsistent with the evidence: mask mandates have no effect on case numbers and nor did lockdowns. Whether you like this or not is irrelevant - the data is final. Therefore the droplet theory is wrong, and by extension theories based on it are also wrong.
There is an alternative theory of how SARS-CoV-2 spreads through the air: that the viruses can exist in fine aerosols that can be suspended in the air for relatively long periods. This theory is consistent with the evidence actually available:
1. It's consistent with islands that closed their borders early being able to keep the virus out, but nowhere else.
2. It's consistent with mask wearing having no effect, because masks aren't airtight. You still need to breathe in the surrounding air and the holes in masks are much too large to stop a very fine suspended aerosol. Additionally it wouldn't matter even if they are airtight and very good filters because there's evidence the virus can enter via the eyeballs too.
3. It's consistent with lockdowns having no effect. Even in "lockdown" lots of people still need to be in areas recently vacated by other people, like shops, factories, anything to do with the supply chain.
4. It's consistent with the apparent lack of infections outside. Where the wind blows, aerosols emitted by an infected person are rapidly dispersed in the air.
5. It's consistent with the failure of measures like handwashing to keep the virus out of care homes.
It's also consistent with SARS-CoV-1, in which an outbreak was investigated and the conclusion was it circulated through an apartment block via air in drainpipes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/04/18/i...
That isn't possible with the droplet theory, but is perfectly possible with aerosol theory.
The fact that "actual scientists" doing "real research" show that masks work is actually evidence that their research is garbage and they aren't "actual scientists", at least not if we define scientists as people who successfully apply the scientific method to understand reality. If they worked then you'd be able to consistently see the impact in case numbers, but that's simply impossible.
If you read any of their studies you'll soon be struck by how universally poor the quality of COVID research actually is. The scientific method as normally meant has more or less gone AWOL and what's left behind is a bunch of people who very much have an agenda desperately trying to justify why their previous advice wasn't wrong. I really couldn't care less what "actual scientists" think at this point. If they want to be taken seriously they need to provide evidence that's strongly convincing on its own merits, because their institutional credibility has long since turned to dust.