> I'd more restate it as "for a given population size, enough people would mess up that making everyone wear one would not slow the spread of the disease". ...

> I'd more restate it as "for a given population size, enough people would mess up that making everyone wear one would not slow the spread of the disease". ...but this is even less conservative than the review summary, which was inexplicably panned. The clause "enough people would mess up that making everyone wear one would not slow the spread of the disease" is part of the consideration that goes into "community transmission" (or the phrase "in the community", which is sometimes used in formal publications as an abstraction for real-world compliance levels) and is distinct from "individual transmission". The sentence in question is: "Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI)/COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants;" [0] ...it's hard to imagine how this extremely sober (and factually proper) extrapolation of the data has caused such a kerfuffle. Is it any wonder that the people who have been studying this topic since before it was cool are puzzled? 0: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36715243/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36715243/ edit: my apologies - I just read that you addressed this elsewhere in the thread. It seems that we are in agreement (and I just don't think there is a reasonable alternative assessment for any numerate / literate reading of the data.)