Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In most places, hospital are not overloaded If you speak to any doctor or nurse they will disagree with you. While we might not be at a breaking point for number of beds, the staff that have to put themselves in harms way do have the option to just quit. When that starts happening in mass we are all screwed.
I spoke with a nurse while at gym I attend. She spoke about how the hospital she's at is not close to be overwhelmed. She also talked about she doesn't wear a mask outside of her job as they have training and n95 masks which work in a hospital setting. But outside of a hospital environment the masks provide little protection, especially cloth masks.
My experience of talking to medical professionals is that they consider a number like 50% reduction in infections "very little protection", because they (correctly) would use a mask providing 99% protection or whatever in any situation where real protection was needed. But outside of a hospital setting, epidemiologically, a 50% or even 20% reduction in reproduction number makes a big difference to the overall dynamics of an outbreak.