[mcguire]

As I've not been commuting for a couple of years, I am way behind in my podcasts. Just this weekend, I listened to the March 10, 2020 episode of "Naked Scientists" (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/), a British radio science show from Cambridge. Chris Smith, a virologist, (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/users/chris-smith), at that time, said to buy beer rather than masks; you'll enjoy the beer and it'll protect you as well as a mask.

His concerns were that (1) cloth masks wouldn't help, and (2) that wearing masks incorrectly wouldn't help either. He was wrong about (1), but (2) is still a problem.

I'm sure I'll have opportunity to provide updates as I get further along. :-)

The Nature podcast didn't get on the mask bandwagon until early June, when they had an interview on the effectiveness of masks in this specific case.

No one I've seen has said that medical masks don't work.