[renaudg]

> no reliable evidence that masking worked(or rather, that mask mandates worked, but these are virtually the same thing).

No it's not the same thing, and that's the key point. If you tell people that masking doesn't work (which is false) then of course mask mandates won't work because adherence will be low. A self-fulfilling prophecy really.

[mike_hearn]

Compliance for COVID mask mandates was measured and found to be extremely high, especially at the start (>95%). These mandates were enforced by harsh penalties so high compliance levels is no surprise. Thus you can't argue mask mandates didn't work because of low compliance.

Also health authorities told people masks were highly effective. That's what justified the mandates. So you can't argue mask mandates didn't work because people were told it wouldn't work.

Therefore there's no self fulfilling prophecy here. It didn't even matter what individuals thought anyway, we all had to wear masks.

Although Cochrane much prefers to use RCTs, people have run regressions over the data and there was no link between levels of mask wearing and infection rates. It sucks but it appears that masks just can't stop aerosolized virus, which spreads like a gas. They aren't designed to do that so it's no knock against the manufacturers, who in some cases explicitly warned people that their products would be useless for that purpose (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfNmzptXkAEg9Od?format=jpg&name=...).