[panarky]

It helps to understand the relative sizes of the particles masks are expected to filter from the air.

A coronavirus is about 0.1 µm while surgical masks start to become effective at around 200 µm and up.

So a coronavirus is about 2000 times smaller than what a surgical mask can filter.

I imagine a chain link fence which is pretty effective at stopping basketballs.

A pollen spore is about 2000 times smaller than a basketball.

Chain link fences are useless in stopping pollen spores, just like surgical masks are useless in filtering coronaviruses.

The only benefit to a surgical mask is to prevent the infected person from spraying large drops of saliva and mucus onto surfaces, there is zero benefit for the uninfected.

If you're uninfected, you don't need a mask unless you're caring for sick patients. And even then a surgical mask is pretty useless, you'd need a quality N95 or N100 mask and eye protection.

[marvin]

Those virus particles usually ride on a droplet of fluid, or another big particle. And you're not guaranteed to get sick if you ingest one virus.

[remmargorp64]

Everyone seems to missing one very big, important thing that masks accomplish, even if they don't stop the airborne virus itself:

Masks stop people from constantly touching and/or itching their mouth and nose.

Think about that for a second, before you tell people how useless masks are.

[shalmanese]

Near universal masking reduced the rate of all infectious diseases, including influenza down to near zero. The size of the virus is irrelevant, it's the size of the carrier medium which is droplets that are very effective at being caught in masks.