That being said, if you want to better protect yourself, you should probably be wearing a better quality mask. It's the reason why I've only ever worn KN95 or N95 masks since the start of the pandemic.
To me this was all null and void if you are sharing a tight enclosed space for any significant period of time- like a restaurant, or even an office. Then you need something like an N95 to get any significant protection.
I understand people's frustration, but I think its important to remember that organizations like the CDC are trying to make a recommendation that balances many factors like convenience/discomfort vs availability of masks, vs what is actually understood about the transmissibility of the virus in its ever changing forms. Even taking that into account, it seems relatively simple to set up experiments that can test the effectiveness of these claims- and why no one has done this is kind of baffling to me- I am guessing these are prevented by ethics concerns where you will have to expose healthy people to the virus.
The appearance of not doing nothing has driven every recommendation/mandate/edict during the past 2+ years.
I guess the goal was to do something rather than nothing, but unless you are at least using a medical grade mask you're not accomplishing very much.
It's like mandating seatbelts but not specifying type so a shoestring tied across your chest is considered a seatbelt.