The top three are actually one: they're useless

Matt Margolis, PJ Media:

5 things to tell someone who harasses you for going maskless

1. Dr. Fauci said masks won’t protect you

These mask shamers think they’re doing the right thing because they’ve been told to mask up. However, these religious Covidians probably forgot that even their messiah, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that the “typical mask” you can buy wouldn’t protect you from COVID. He never said this publicly, but we know this from an email released as part of a FOIA request last year.

“Masks are really for infected people to protect them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci wrote on February 5, 2020. “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”

2. Studies have shown they don’t filter aerosols well

I guarantee you that most people aren’t wearing N95 or KN95 masks. Those are the best masks by far, but they are more expensive and may not be readily available or practical for some people. So, it’s a safe bet that your mask shamer will be wearing a cloth mask or one of those blue surgical masks they got from a pharmacy or online. A study from the University of Waterloo in Canada determined that most cloth masks, such as the popular blue surgical masks, are only 10 percent effective since they don’t adequately cover the wearer’s mouth.

According to the study, “the most common masks, primarily due to problems with fit, filter about 10 percent of exhaled aerosol droplets. The remaining aerosols are redirected, mostly out the top of the mask where it fits over the nose, and escape into the ambient air unfiltered.”

N95 and KN95 masks do the best job at containing aerosol droplets from the wearer’s mouth, but even they aren’t perfect. For example, they only filter over 50 percent of exhaled aerosols.

Other studies have shown that masks aren’t necessarily effective at protecting wearers from spreading or catching COVID.

3. Mask mandates haven’t worked

If masks worked, then places with strict mask mandates should have seen a measurable impact from having mask mandates imposed, right? Guess again. For starters, a CDC study showed no difference in infection rates between schools with and without mask mandates.

Let’s be honest…

If mask mandates had a measurable impact on COVID transmission rates, then we’d be able to observe this. However, the chart below shows cases per population in four different California counties last year; each implemented mask mandates at different times. So not only did the mandate have zero impact on cases, but the counties had nearly identical trajectories.

What about those superior N95 masks? They don’t make a difference either.