BTW...while Delta is scary the numbers are still vastly in favor of the vaccinated. There is a lot of heavy breathing over this and in truth those of us with a brain are still protected. We can get sick and we can obviously spread but the way some are acting is way over the top considering the available info. What's worse is that overreaction and sometimes misrepresentation is being used by the Anti-vaxxers to push their agenda making things even worse.
The vaccine is still working.
edit: Being vaccinated does not mean you should still not take precautions obviously. Going to a concert and not masking up is just braindead stupidity.
Masks don’t control the spread of respiratory viruses. How do we know? 1. Widely studied and accepted prior to 2020. 2. Studies in favor of masking are shockingly weak.
3. Oceans of data from past 18 months - if masks worked we would see it. But we don’t.
Pre-covid, the fact that masks are not effective for controlling the spread of respiratory viruses had been well-studied for decades and the near-unanimous and completely uncontroversial conclusion was that they don't help.
Here is May a 2020 CDC meta study of RCTs that concludes there is no benefit of face masks for controlling influenza:
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
Here is a more comprehensive list of studies of mask effectiveness, much but not all of it from the pre-covid period.
https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/
On to the second main point - the studies that mask advocates put forward to show that masks do work are just incredibly weak.
Then there were the two hairdressers in Missouri who failed to infect their clients. Couldn't possibly be any other reason for that besides the masks, right!? Seriously, this is one of the most cited pieces of "research" in favor of masks.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e2.htm
Finally, we have just been through 18+ months of a huge variety of masking behaviour and mandates. There are oceans of data. There is every opportunity for the efficacy of mask wearing to show itself in the data. But it has resoundingly failed to do so.
This, to me, is the most powerful evidence of all that masks make no difference. If they made a difference, WE WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE IT by now.