No it hasn't. Show me the research.
> "all masks didn't work, but you should save it for the health care workers". The absurd contradiction
It's not an absurd contradiction. A member of the public walks around and is only going to meet a few people with covid-19, and hopefully they are pre-symptomatic (because if they have symptoms they need to stay at home)
A healthcare professional is stuck in a room with symptomatic people, often in close contact. And they're not wearing a cloth mask or fluid resistant surgical mask, they're wearing a mask that has to be fitted to them. They have training on how to put it on and take it off. They also wear gloves, a gown, and a face shield or eye protection. They have running water and soap, and they have alcohol handgel. For fluid resistant surgical masks they take them off and use a new one for each patient.
One patient in one ICU bay will have 30 pairs of gloves used by staff per day.
Here: https://www.livescience.com/face-masks-eye-protection-covid-...
> With face masks, the chance of infection or transmission was 3% with a mask compared with 17% without a mask, a reduction of more than 80%. And for eye protection, the chance of infection or transmission was 6% with protection and 16% without.
It's clear that the message in the early stages of the pandemic was that "all masks didn't work, but you should save it for the health care workers". The absurd contradiction of that statement was what made reasonable people such as myself no longer trust what they said, because it was obvious they were hiding things from us. It's obvious that if you have a respiratory disease, then wearing a mask will be effective.
Since then, it has come out that masks are actually extremely effective in preventing spread.