To me wearing a mask when near others is a social responsibility. I wear mine to protect others and would like everyone else to do the same in an ideal world. It may not give me much protection but every little helps. Mine is a home made pleated mask ( cotton) two layers and I put a kitchen roll filter between the two layers. It has a wire nose piece to ensure a snug fit. Steam ironing it between wears to kill bugs.
Do you have a link for that research?
Mask wearing shows you are following the law and behaving in what is regarded as a moral fashion (lots of infomercials on the topic of unselfishly wearing masks, keep landing in my ears at work).
Most people now have their own cloth masks and unlike you I imagine many are not treating them like their pants as the meme go (boil washing and putting them on fresh after each use) The only RCT I can find shows them to be pretty useless in stopping transmission. Most of the research done prior to this was on the correctly worn surgical type masks in a hospital setting in the context of preventing outbreaks of disease in those settings with high staff absences and spread to patient being a concern. Suddenly a bunch of theoretical experiments have been done (not in the real settings we would see in our community) to support the policies which have also changed course drastically.
A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare wor
Results The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm, with the rate of ILI statistically significantly higher in the cloth mask arm (relative risk (RR)=13.00, 95% CI 1.69 to 100.07) compared with the medical mask arm. Cloth masks also had significantly higher rates of ILI compared with the control arm. An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group.
Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.
I also wondered if the practice of wearing masks has any impact on levels of respiratory viruses in Asian countries. It is hard to find much but here is the conculusion of a Japansese survey of 3000 people which suggests that its the hands and space bit that helps.
Conclusions
Overall, this study suggests that wearing a face mask in public may be associated with other personal hygiene practices and health behaviors among Japanese adults. Rather than preventing influenza itself, face mask use might instead be a marker of additional, positive hygiene practices and other favorable health behaviors in the same individuals.