This paper is being misinterpreted everywhere in this very misleading fashion. See this blog post Raina MacIntyre (the first author) wrote to clarify this: https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/impact-ppe-shortages-healt...

People misrepresenting this study are doing tremendous harm, it has to stop.

That is not what that study says. Yes, cloth masks are not as effective as medical masks. But the study does not compare cloth masks with no masks. The three groups in the study are:

> medical masks, cloth masks or a control group (usual practice, which included mask wearing).

Yes, the cloth mask group had more infections than the medical mask group and the control group. But the control group included wearing masks as usual. It does NOT say cloth masks are less effective than nothing. "No mask" was not studied. Cloth masks might be less effective than wearing no mask (I personally doubt that), but this study didn't say anything about that hypothesis.