My experience of talking to medical professionals is that they consider a number like 50% reduction in infections "very little protection", because they (correctly) would use a mask providing 99% protection or whatever in any situation where real protection was needed. But outside of a hospital setting, epidemiologically, a 50% or even 20% reduction in reproduction number makes a big difference to the overall dynamics of an outbreak.
Meanwhile, here is a pretty good article about how healthcare workers are handling the pandemic: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/third-sur...
As additional anecdata, the sentiments expressed in the article are in line with what I have been hearing from healthcare professionals in my circle of friends.