In 2020, I wanted to understand the issue better, so I followed all the links from my government website to any research regarding masks.

My government had first stated that wearing masks by the public was not effective and wearing them was actually very selfish and stupid, because masks were needed by the medical professionals.

The marrative then took a 180 turn, and then same officials said that masks were effective and not wearing masks was selfish and stupid. They also admitted to lying about the effectiveness of masks before, claiming they wanted save masks for the medical professionals.

The only research I could find through links from these government health policy organizations was a meta analysis on the European CDC website, stating that the evidence was inconclusive but masks should be worn anyway. The recommendation of the organization did not follow from their own research.

So seeing that the policy had already been based on admitted lies about the research, and that even current research at the time by the organization itself could not support the recommendation, I had to come to a conclusion that mask recommendations were a very political issue.

Then I went to read on the methdologies on how the effectiveness can is measured. The general scientific consensus before COVID appreared to be that using masks even by the surgeons did not reduce the risk of tramitting disaease from the surgeon to the patient, but still all surgeons thoughy that it was a good idea to use them.

The narrative “at least it prevents droplets from reaching and infecting others” actually relies in the assumption that we know the transmission mechanism for the specific disease.

We did not know it at the time for COVID, and I believe we still do not know it conclusively.

Some research has been done on the effectiveness of masks on diseases that are transmitted via aerosols. The surprising finding was that although the mask catches the droplets, the mask does not ultimately keep them but the droplets are vaporized in the process, and many of them are turned into aerosols. So using masks actually may increase the transmission for disases that are transmitted through aerosolic particles.