What you want is masks + distance. The mask is really a stop-gap measure when keeping distance fails.
Also: gloves.
Of course, yes, it would be easy to say, "just never get in range and the mask doesn't matter," but we live in urban environments and need to do the best we can in light of that.
That being said, even used incorrectly they would definitely drastically help.
Losing ten percent of three nines is huge, losing ten percent of coin flip reliability is negligible. (but a coin flip reduction in everyday infection rates would still be huge). I strongly believe that unnecessary fretting over clinical hygiene rules of mask handling is responsible for a massive adoption delay, or adoption gap even today.