Not quite. The wording has to be parsed carefully: > Those living in villages randomly assigned to a series of interventions promoting the use of surgical mask

Not quite. The wording has to be parsed carefully: > Those living in villages randomly assigned to a series of interventions promoting the use of surgical masks were about 11% less likely than those living in control villages to develop COVID-19 So it's not mask vs. maskless; it's promotion of masks vs. no such promotion. The study [0] gives more information: > In villages that received the intervention, mask use increased by 29 percentage points (from 13 percent in the comparison villages to 42 percent in treatment villages). [0]: https://www.poverty-action.org/study/impact-mask-distribution-and-promotion-mask-uptake-and-covid-19-bangladesh https://www.poverty-action.org/study/impact-mask-distributio...