Google will easily point you to mountains of evidence that they do work, from scientific studies. If you don't want to look at them or convince yourself you know better than the people who conducted these studies then that's unfortunate.
I've looked at a lot of COVID related research papers over the last year, which is exactly why I don't take them seriously anymore. The quality is extremely low and they routinely do things that aren't scientifically valid without any obvious repercussions for the authors.
Fortunately, again, one more time. You do not need scientific studies to see the truth here. The goal of mask mandates was to change case curves. That was their only justification. In a large number of places mask mandates were added or removed without the case graphs changing. Therefore, they do not work. Everything beyond that is irrelevant and frequently confused, e.g. studies on masks are not relevant to the question of mask mandates.
Please do. Perhaps after a few more years of articles like the one this thread is originally about, you'll look at it in a new light. The sort of "scientists" who inhabit our universities have no monopoly on the truth, as the world is slowly coming to accept.
