The mask test is an interesting one. Please don’t fry me for this, but the WHO has a report on mask usage from December that notes some inconclusiveness in comm

The mask test is an interesting one. Please don’t fry me for this, but the WHO has a report on mask usage from December that notes some inconclusiveness in community settings. It can be very hard to prove something with a rather small effect compared to real-world complexity. This is in contrast to vaccines that have a rather strong signal. Please read the whole section because I cherry picked just one paragraph without full context. I just wanted to demonstrate that nothing is actually all that obvious when it comes to the pandemic. > Evidence on the protective effect of mask use in community settings > At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (75). A large randomized community-based trial in which 4862 healthy participants were divided into a group wearing medical/surgical masks and a control group found no difference in infection with SARS-CoV-2 (76). A recent systematic review found nine trials (of which eight were cluster-randomized controlled trials in which clusters of people, versus individuals, were randomized) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness. Two trials were with healthcare workers and seven in the community. The review concluded that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the prevention of influenza-like illness (ILI) (RR 0.99, 95%CI 0.82 to 1.18) or laboratory confirmed illness (LCI) (RR 0.91, 95%CI 0.66-1.26) (44); the certainty of the evidence was low for ILI, moderate for LCI. https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1319378/retrieve https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1319378/retrieve