Surgical high-proof mask doctors and nurses use are pretty good against viruses, combined with googles of course.
For normal person? They are mostly useless. Only for people, who are already sick, to stop them from spreading virus further. Wearing mask by healthy person doesn't make sense, because there is not much to stop viruses with coming in contact with your eyes. You are always a scratch away from bringing those viruses into your body, negating any benefit from mask. And most of mask, you can buy currently are not dense enough to capture viruses.
OP is correct, unless you are sick or medical worker, you don't need mask. Don't buy them, hospitals need them much more than you.
I believe this is primarily a narrative that was invented to prevent a temporary shortage of masks for health care workers. This may be a noble cause, but it's still a lie. Surgical masks reduce the probability of infecting others if you have it (maybe without knowing), and correctly used N95 masks drastically reduce the risk of getting infected.
There is a reason why South Korea officially distributes masks to the public. Everybody in China and Japan wears masks, too.
The thing with this virus, you typically don't know you are infected until it's too late and you already infected a number of others. The goal with masks is not to protect you, but to protect the general population. Any basic mask will do for that purpose.
Because masks don’t reduce transmission. Communication on this has been very clear. Masks don’t help. Frequently washing hands, avoiding contact with others, keeping your surroundings clean, and not touching your face does help. Masks give a false sense of security and reduce supply for those that need them.
I wonder why doctors and nurses use them then. They usw them in most situations. I wonder why they complain about lack of them. Since they are useless.
Sure, they are not as good as respirators. And we as general public should not bulk buy them now.
Common sense says that any kind of barrier between cough or sneeze droplets and my nose or mouth will reduce the probability of me breathing it in. I could tie a scarf around my mouth. It may not be perfect but even if it reduces transmission by 5%, Why not?
