Well the general argument here is not "masks are perfectly safe", it's "masks are far less likely to kill you than what they protect you from". Hospital workers

Well the general argument here is not "masks are perfectly safe", it's "masks are far less likely to kill you than what they protect you from". Hospital workers wear them for hours and hours every day. Even if we pretend that covid doesn't cause death or long term complications, masks also protect you from the flu and the flu kills people every year too. It's probably possible to create masks that don't shed particles, but they're much more expensive and that means we wouldn't be able to protect most people.