> It's just hygiene theater to make people feel better. With the disclaimer that I'm not an expert: this is wrong. Cloth masks are moderately effective in prev

> It's just hygiene theater to make people feel better. With the disclaimer that I'm not an expert: this is wrong. Cloth masks are moderately effective in preventing the wearer from infecting others. N95/N99 masks do this job much better, as well as significantly protecting the wearer, unlike cloth masks. We've known this for some time. As far as I know there's no reason to believe the new variants have changed things, other than making it even more beneficial to switch to N95/N99. A slight aside: apparently Austria now requires use of FFP2 masks (roughly equivalent to the N95 classification): https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n432 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n432