Whether they work for the general population is maybe a concern for Fauci, the government and the odd HN commenter. The message was that they don't work to protect individuals from the virus, hence they should not be bought by normal people.
That's obviously false. And an individual will be first and foremost concerned about their own safety, not if they can single-handedly stop the pandemic.
It's not obviously false, because there were studies available at the time that showed masks did not work to protect individuals, especially members of the public.
But, again, I'd be interested to read any studies you have that were 1) available at the time and 2) showed benefit of wearing masks.
I've linked this somewhere else: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25479729. This references studies from the SARS times and for flu. N95/FFP2 masks are pretty well established, they were used by front line workers in all the pandemics in the last decades.
That's why most Western countries were stockpiling them - as protection in case of a flu pandemic.
We had lots of studies around mask wearing, and most of them really struggled to show any kind of benefit.
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