I love how not until COVID-19 hit did face masks suddenly become effective against a respiratory virus. But COVID-19 is a magical virus as we know and it changes all the standards of science and biology that preceded it. That in all the randomized controlled trials (RCT's) ever produced regarding the effectiveness of face masks from 1946 to July, 2018 it was found that face masks provided no significant reduction in transmission.
But this article published by the CDC is so antiquated that it was published back in May, 2020. Plus on an anecdotal note, Asian countries such as China and Japan have been wearing face masks for decades without a global pandemic and as we all saw COVID-19 didn't affect either of those countries because of their mass face mask wearing (sarcasm).
From the linked CDC article:
Face Masks
In our systematic review, we identified 10 RCTs that reported estimates of the effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the community from literature published during 1946–July 27, 2018. In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
To add to this... There should have been really good data to follow that proves masks work... in short, Leon county for example implemented the mask rule and other counties in FL did not. I did this research not because I'm anti mask... I really wanted to know if a mask actually helps my family and others or not.
So let's compare Leon to Brevard (I live in leon, my family in brevard so I have personal experience in both places).
Leon:
--sent home the student populations for FSU, FAMU, and TCC
--has a very high ratio of white collar workers that also were sent home
--implemented a mask rule county wide and it's been followed fairly well
--has little to no tourism
--shut down all parks, ball fields, etc.
Brevard:
--relies on both white collar and tourism jobs (beach communities)
--no mask rule and social distancing is a joke IMO
--parks have been open and attracting outside people for some time (USSSA fields as an example)
So based on the 'masks work' and social distancing info that has been spread Leon should be trending better than Brevard yet... Brevard is sitting at around half the number of cases per 100k. Brevard's trend has also been significantly better and nothing about the trend has changed for leon before / after the mask rule went into effect relative to the rest of the state.
I did a pretty in depth look into FL counties and after throwing out the ones with low population (which can skew the numbers one way or the other) the data shows zero impact on areas where masks are required vs counties where they are not. There is simply more to what makes it spread