You are screaming into a hurricane when you try to get public health authorities to be honest about the lack of efficacy of forced masking to prevent community spread of a respiratory virus like CV-19. Slowly but surely at least there is acknowledgment that there is no benefit shown by any research, including the phony studies promoted by the CDC and others. Here is a reanalysis of data from a study in Boston area schools, which shows that contrary to the original promoted findings of 30% fewer cases, there was zero benefit to forced masking. The authors used a fuller data set and explored potential confounders. (Arxiv Study)
Every day now we see studies on the failure of the public health policies implemented during the epidemic and on the damage done by those policies. So you would hope that there would be some memory of this in the next epidemic. That is a forlorn hope. Panicked politicians will simply resort to the most draconian measures they can imagine and terrorize the population into meekly submitting to those policies.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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Mr. Roche:
I spent 27 years as a Design Engineer for a filtration company and spent several months of that time helping with the design of NBC filtration systems for military applications. This is by way of background information; I don’t argue from experience, just facts and data. I may have learned a little bit about air filtration during that time, which cripples me with actual knowledge during discussion of the “efficiency” (actually efficacy) of single-layer cloth or paper face masks in stopping aerosol-borne viruses.
First, the challenge material for a face mask is said to be the human respirable aerosols on which the viral materials are carried. We won’t talk about filtering viruses themselves since they’re a couple of orders of magnitude smaller that the aerosols on which they travel. So how big are these? We’re not talking the size of droplets that these masks are intended to stop, which come from coughing or sneezing, we’re talking about the aerosols you literally cannot see unless they’re so highly concentrated as to look like a cloud. The size range for human respirable aerosols is typically noted as 2 to 5 microns.
Side Note: A micron is 1/25,400th of an inch…for this discussion I’ll simplify it to 1/25,000th.
So 2 to 5 microns is around 1/12,500th to 1/5,000th of an inch. These are the aerosols the masks are intended to stop.
What’s the typical opening size of the mesh of a single-layer cloth or paper mask? The ones I’ve looked at under magnification (note that NONE of these are NIOSH-rated N95’s or similar) have an opening size of between 1/250th to 1/500th of an inch.
I know this requires math, but can somebody please compare the opening sizes of the mask material to the aerosols? At best, they’re 10 times bigger than the aerosols that they’re supposed to stop.
This is not trying to keep mosquitoes out of your house by putting chainlink fence across the windows; this is trying to stop gnats with burglar bars.
I won’t even go into the fact that NONE of these masks has anything remotely approaching a good face seal, and that a huge portion of the inhale and an even bigger portion of the exhale goes right around the mask material. If you’ve ever worn an actual NIOSH-rated respirator, you know that even beard stubble will prevent a good seal, and that people who wear them long-term, for more that a few hours, develop facial bruising and skin depressions from the mask’s sealing surface.
Here’s (what used to be) a good OSHA site on the difference between respirators and masks:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200302220102/https://www.osha.gov/Publications/respirators-vs-surgicalmasks-factsheet.html
Key quote: “Surgical masks are not designed or certified to prevent the inhalation of small airborne contaminants. These particles are not visible to the naked eye but may still be capable of causing infection. Surgical masks are not designed to seal tightly against the user’s face. During inhalation, much of the potentially contaminated air can pass through gaps between the face and the surgical mask and not be pulled through the filter material of the mask. Their ability to filter small particles varies significantly based upon the type of material used to make the surgical mask, so they cannot be relied upon to protect workers against airborne infectious agents.”
And for some funny reason the original US government web site on which that was accessed is now a “404 – Not found”. But I’m sure that shenanigans aren’t at play.
I’ve said from the start of the Covidiocy that single-layer cloth and paper masks were worse than useless, and it’s now been completely proven to be true. But facts and data will NEVER convince somebody once they’ve been conned…their self-image is too tied up to admit that kind of error in judgment.
A very common result in the mask mandate vs no masking studies promoted by the CDC is that gap in the infection rate receded back to little or no gap benefit after 5-8 weeks. almost every mask study showing a benefit of masking cut the study period short to hide the reversion back to no benefit. (“hide the decline”). The Boston area school masking study was the only study that I recall that reported the study period out long enough to show a decline in the masking benefit.
Blackwing makes a very good point on why masks lacked the physical properties that would make masking effective.
Even assuming that masks did work (which blackwing explains why that is not possible), then the best result that masks would offer would only be a delay in achieving immunity through out the general population. By March 2020, covid was already too deeply embedded into the general population , thus could never be eradicated. The vaccines, while marginally effective for a short period, were never going to provided sufficient long term immunity. The only long term solution was to develop natural immunity through the general population. If masks had worked ( or been partially effective) the covid pandemic would have lasted 4-5 years while natural immunity would have taken hold through out the general population vs the 2 &1/2 years, a time frame comparable to the 1918 spanish flu.