I mean discussions are typically both science and politics. Masks lower the amount of people that get sick is scientific fact; why do you think they wear them in the operating room? Whether or not that is "worth" wearing a mask is politics though. However, if you want to convince people of something (aka politics) you may want to appeal to them using logic and for that you'll want to use facts.

Having large variability doesn't make something not a fact. Plenty of males 20-24 do not get in car accidents but that doesn't mean that none of them will or that if you were to insure say 100k males 20-24 and 100k females 20-24 that the males wouldn't in aggregate have higher claims. But given a specific male and specific female its entirely possible that the female gets into an accident first.

The issue with masks is one side started treating them like a talisman that makes infection impossible, which provoked the other side to say they do nothing.

On a population level, masks are probably close to ineffective against a viral pathogen. You can read the relevant Cochrane review to see that.

On an individual level they obviously do something, but you have to consider other factors as well, such as level/frequency of exposure and the like. Studies from prior to the pandemic suggested that a perfectly fitted N95 mask dramatically reduced flu virus penetration. For a more normally worn N95 the reduction was about 70%. For a surgical mask it was essentially nil. Importantly, a perfectly fitted mask required essentially gluing it to the face of a mannequin.

Final point is, with an intervention whose impact is measurable but imperfect, you have to consider the side effects. I personally know several friends of my teenage kids who now have odd (to me at least) social phobias for which the only “cure” is to wear masks everywhere. Just last weekend I was talking to a friend of my daughter who wears masks everywhere except indoors.

It would be nice to have some numbers to back this up. Let's suppose the "viral load" to acquire a Covid infection is 18 particles, the same as norovirus detailed in the article. And let's say you're exposed to hundreds of thousands of viral particles every minute you spend near a sick person [1]. If a mask reduces your viral load by 50%, is that a worthwhile method of avoiding infection?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7598485/

Science is an on going process, always open to being overturned.

To the point of masks - I agree with your statement here, but a regular mask (filtered masks should help to some extent) will not protect you from an infected person. An infected person with a mask will reduce the chance of spreading their viral load.

This detail is where I feel people are talking past eachother. Most of covid denial to me seems to be about a psychological reactance to being told to mask up when they are not sick.

One might argue that the extra chance of reduced vectorization is worth mask mandates, but that simplistic purely “scientific” approach is its own problem. You have to argue people where they are at and convince them, not force the “right” view on them and then get upset they are “in denial” or skeptical.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)

I just don't get the rejection of basic facts.

However there are statistics that areas with more masking had less severe illness. However that’s uncontrolled and some other factors or factors might account for both increased masking and reduced spread. That’s probably the case otherwise the RCTs would show efficacy.

All of the subsequent work is just computer models and doesn’t actually tell us anything empirical. Obviously it’s easier to create a model that produces the desired result than it is an RCT.

Infection is binary or not. You either get exposed to enough to actually result in replication inside your body or you don't. If you get exposed to a small amount and your immune system immediately eliminates it, that's not an infection.

The amount of exposure needed to actually cause an infection is different from person to person depending on their immediate immune response.

But it's not like reducing exposure by 50% reduces disease severity by 50%. Biology doesn't work that way.

^ and the more you have it the less severe it is, until it asymptotically reaches a complete non-issue. As with the common cold.

A phrase like "the raw quantity of infectious agent and the exposure rate" is calling attention to the fact that one brief intense exposure vs repeated small exposures over a long time span may have vastly different outcomes despite presenting your immune system with the same number of microbes to deal with.