From the link you provided:
No layer of swiss cheese is perfect, but 55% reduction in aerosols and small particles is pretty good for a cheap and simple effort like wearing a medical mask.
Just as installing a kid's car seat into your car improperly renders it less safe than is achievable, the same goes for masks. We have regular child car seat education and installation inspections run by the local healthcare system in partnership with the fire and police department and even one of the car dealerships in my town. Why not the same approach to masks?
Clearly, masks are not a silver bullet and have never been suggested to be one by anyone informed on the subject, they're just a first step. Let's look at what our industry has achieved by taking extra steps to mitigate the threat of viral transmission.
Here's a look at the DoD study of covid transmission on aircraft:
https://crankyflier.com/2020/10/20/q...-on-airplanes/
Air ventilation and filtration are also important ways to reduce risk as well. As a result, airline employees have lower covid infection rates than the general population.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/us-a...ry?id=73149839
No one is saying mask up and you're invincible. The multi-layered approach of threat reduction works when applied properly by motivated parties. We take that approach every day at our jobs. The government takes the same approach to auto safety, ensuring proper design of vehicles and their safety systems, certification of drivers, maintaining safe road conditions through federal, state, and local DOTs, and enforcing traffic laws with police departments. None of those efforts alone has been responsible for decreasing rates of traffic deaths, they must be used in conjunction to be effective.
The problem we face now as a country is the conversion of the will of the people into action. An overwhelming majority of people support taking efforts to control the spread of the virus, like mask mandates.
https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-ne...a18f9584061f8d
We're a nation that rationed food and had mandatory black outs during World War 2. I've seen a whole region come together to build a sandbag levy to save cities from rising floodwaters. Americans are willing and capable of rising to meet a great many challenges and overcome them collectively as a nation. We wouldn't be the nation we are today if we had resigned ourselves to failure in the face of adversity in the past, so let's not start with that hazardous attitude today.