I'm baffled that anybody ever thought they weren't helpful. As if we haven't been using masks against airborne diseases for the past hundred years. But suddenly they would be useless against Covid. Then they point to one or two studies as if they support their argument, when there were at least as many at the same time showing the opposite. Also ignoring decades of evidence of the efficacy of masks. I thought I was taking crazy pills. The
default for all airborne disease in the absence of significant evidence (particularly in the case of a novel one) is to
use masks. Anything else is pure idiocy.
By the time officials admitted they were "helpful" (because of course they were, there's nothing particularly special about Covid in that respect), it was already way too late to get masks. Because anybody with any basic knowledge of disease and medicine had already bought up all the supply long before.
Another way of looking at it is in a betting scenario. I want to make money. The two options I can bet on are
a) Based on decades of scientific evidence, buy fuck loads of masks on the likelihood of them being anywhere from moderately to highly effective.
b) Masks are useless based on two early studies in a highly unstable situation with little accurate information and low confidence, counter to established medical practice with no other basis in reliable evidence.
Guess what I'm betting on. Further, the risks associated with being wrong are far lower with option A than with option B.