Masks only work by trained professionals in high risk situations.
Reevaluating Mask Effectiveness: Insights From Evidence-Based Medicine and Clinical Trials - PMC
During the COVID-19 pandemic, masks were widely promoted and mandated as a key measure to help reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. These policies were primarily informed by laboratory evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of particle ...pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Conclusions
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, masks have been promoted as an important tool to reduce or even halt the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the population. Many governments mandated the use of masks in public by law. However, even before the pandemic, the best evidence available from randomized trials was already showing that masks are likely ineffective in curbing respiratory viral transmission. Additional high-quality data produced throughout the pandemic reinforced that conclusion. While intuition and laboratory experiments suggest that masks are plausible interventions, their continued failure in randomized clinical trials undermines their practical effectiveness.
RCTs for this kind of study is flawed. The wider medical community doesn't accept these fringe claims. In the US, from 2018-2020, 59,000 people died from the flu with an mind boggling 380,000 hospitalizations. From 2020-2021, only 600 people died from it with 2500 hospitalizations. What was the one common denominator that flu season? Everyone and their mother was masked up to protect themselves from covid. Even from 2021-2022, we still had another record low of "only" 5,000 deaths. Once we started gradually weening off of masking we're back up to 25,000 in 2023-2024 and a whopping 45,000 deaths in 2024-2025 and 710,000 hospitalizations. You see this same pattern across the entire globe. Of course masks work, even cloth ones. They worked fine against the alpha and delta strains.