First of all, there are very different rationales for healthcare workers and the general public to wear masks. Healthcare workers know they will be exposed, so the protocols must be damn near perfect. The general population does not know if they’ll be exposed, they’re trying to work in aggregate to put a drag on the viruses’ spread; even partially effective mask wearing slows that down. The general population can also practice social distancing, while healthcare workers must spend hours in close personal contact with positive patients by the nature of their jobs, vastly increasing their risk.

Second, this ignores the fact that mass mask usage prevents you from getting someone else sick. This is in fact exactly why surgeons wear surgical masks. Since we’ve known for months that this disease has asymptomatic transmission, the public health rationale for even cloth mask usage was obvious from the very beginning.