I say go to all large scale peer reviewed research prior to 2020. You’re taking some story from someone who writes for a college publication, not a peer reviewed source. There are researchers from Stanford who said exactly what I did above.

Trillions of dollars were pumped into propaganda and research in 2020. It takes years to go through, receive grants, construct experiments, get approvals, analyze and validate. We are only now starting to see initial results for new masking studies. They still need to be replicated, etc.

Here’s an example of a large scale study from 2015 where cloth masks increase risk of illness (over nothing):

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/

Here’s a 2021 study showing masks aren’t really good as well (a randomized control trial) https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

My general point isn’t the specifics, it’s that the jury is out.