The population was told that masks certainly work, in certain areas mandates made sure that compliance is very high >95%.
If we still could not find reliable evidence that masks are effective, then the policy makers should be told that.
There is very little you can do to improve mask wearing technique. We certainly explained these things to doctors, it made no difference in results. If you want to make more controlled studies, you can do that. Don't hold your breath however.
No, we should not continue requiring wearing masks because you are only doing that out of hope. That's not how we do things in medicine. It would be unethical. There are many medicines that show effectiveness in the lab but fail in clinical trials. We don't demand for those medicines to be used until we find more effective alternative. Many unknown factors could cause ineffectiveness in clinical trials, we don't need to understand all of them, just the fact that the drug failed to demonstrate effectiveness and safety in real life settings.
>> a more accessible alternative which is also as effective as masking becomes available
The point is masking was not effective. It has not shown effectiveness anywhere in the real world.
There is very much plenty of fairly reliable evidence that masks work. And the better the compliance the better they work. In nurse studies you get much better results than in population studies, for instance. Now that I'm looking I'm hard pressed to find any studies that go against this conclusion.
If we still could not find reliable evidence that masks are effective, then the policy makers should be told that.
There is very little you can do to improve mask wearing technique. We certainly explained these things to doctors, it made no difference in results. If you want to make more controlled studies, you can do that. Don't hold your breath however.
No, we should not continue requiring wearing masks because you are only doing that out of hope. That's not how we do things in medicine. It would be unethical. There are many medicines that show effectiveness in the lab but fail in clinical trials. We don't demand for those medicines to be used until we find more effective alternative. Many unknown factors could cause ineffectiveness in clinical trials, we don't need to understand all of them, just the fact that the drug failed to demonstrate effectiveness and safety in real life settings.
>> a more accessible alternative which is also as effective as masking becomes available
The point is masking was not effective. It has not shown effectiveness anywhere in the real world.