That’s an interesting interpretation Gothitjulie. So if this is true: ” Improvised homemade face masks may be used to help protect those who could potentially, for example, be at occupational risk from close or frequent contact with symptomatic patients. However, these masks would provide the wearers little protection from microorganisms from others persons who are infected with respiratory diseases. As a result, we would not recommend the use of homemade face masks as a method of reducing transmission of infection from aerosols.” Then, if they don’t reduce transmission of infection from aerosols, what do they do? (assuming the wearer is not at occupational risk from close or frequent contact with symptomatic people)? In other words if we go about maintaining the prescribed 2 metres from strangers?
The main protection is from reducing the transmission from the infected to the non-infected, the 2 metres is again another part of that, these measures add up to reduce the transmission. By the infected we mean those who are not showing outward signs plus those who are.
Remember back to the first lockdown, people walked around supermarkets mainly without masks yet kept their distance & washed their hands more. This worked pretty well & transmission was massively reduced by all the measures working together. Those few of us who wore the masks & nitrile gloves just added a bit more protection.
I’m not sure how well you understand the slopes of the graphs that show infections over time, but you probably will have noticed the different angle of the slope of those graphs between the lead up to the first & second lockdowns, the second increase in infections had a shallower line. Now that shallower line shows a reduced rate of infection, the reasons being some immunity in the population, plus, other measures taken, which will incluse a little bit for the masks, a little bit for the distancing, a little bit for washing the hands, etc. Now, think forwards, if mass vaccination has an effect then the next time the virus tries to spread, that slope may be so shallow as to be flat or headed down, that’s where we want to be by Easter.