Westerners somehow have this weird preconception that those masks are protecting the wearer. No, they are protecting bystanders by reducing the reproduction factor of the disease. With exponential growth even means with low effectiveness can have a huge impact.

We seem to have lost the ability to think in terms of collective benefit, if we ever had it.

Wearing masks and going places are two different thing. Wearing masks should be encouraged early and it could have saved many lives here in US. It's kind of surreal now to think about ppl in crowded cafeteria or pubs back in early Feb where the community spread started. It's a fact that wearing masks is slowing down the spread by as much as 80%. It's not exact immunity but it could have saved many ppl from getting the virus into their system

Do you have a source for "It's a fact that wearing masks is slowing down the spread by as much as 80%."? There's studies that measure the amount of droplets/aerosol that gets through but I haven't seen any studies about how it affects infection rates.

Is there any actual data on this, or is it just one of those things that sounds true so it gets repeated? It seems just as likely that wearing masks would make people more aware that things are not normal.

Discouraging use of actually-effective measures because they make people less risk-averse is dangerous nonsense. Use the measures and then find some other way to affect behavior.

Personally, I have no problem with people wearing masks, scarves, bandanas, or whatever when they're in relatively crowded areas like stores. It seems uncontroversial to say that it doesn't hurt (and may help)--leaving aside some of the supply issues for actual medical masks. But, yes, people should assume that the benefit is probably marginal and not treat masks as a superpower.

Very likely to help https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2007800

Which doesn't really say anything about the effect on transmission of the virus/effect on infection rates especially between people are not in especially close quarters.

To be clear, I'm certainly not against people wearing face coverings but I'm skeptical it does much good.

This is exactly why I don't wear a seatbelt or use condoms. Wouldn't want to have a false sense of security.