Stanford study : Masks ineffective

Appreciate the feedback! Thanks kspkap.

TL;DR: I'm not sure there is one. But…

There's a number of tried-and-true mitigating measures that help, a couple mentioned above, including:

1.) Open air flow, i.e. alleviate recycled air (e.g. only gather outdoors, keep all windows open, etc.)
2.) Social distancing (e.g. maintain distance from other social groups, avoid intergroup gatherings in enclosed spaces)
3.) Sanitation (e.g. wash hands, Lysol everything, etc.); this virus is aerosolized, but can still reside on surfaces
4.) Quarantine if sick, or after being exposed to someone who's sick (ties into item 2 above)
5.) Time and evolution, i.e. ride it out while letting nature do its thing; to some extent we're at its mercy
6.) Avoid obfuscating real science with politically-tainted motivations and rhetoric disguised as science
7.) Don't fart (a juvenile joke, but there is speculation that flatulence could in fact transmit COVID-19)

Or, take the route Sweden did and power through it toward “herd immunity” at a cost of higher infection rates. A few places tried this, and I suppose there are some benefits to the social system as a whole, not to mention evolution itself (i.e. those with stronger immune systems propagate bloodlines with stronger immune systems, while the weak are weeded out), but I question the morality of that approach, and in the long run I think a lot of deaths could have been avoided in Sweden by doing the items above. On the other hand, Italy went the opposite direction and implemented hardline, extreme lockdowns, and yet experienced about a 20% higher mortality rate, indicating there are complex factors at play that aren’t fully understood.

Unfortunately, certain countries around the world went overboard, as did certain states and cities within the U.S., with the lockdowns to a counterproductive and self-destructive degree, throwing around futile restrictions like keeping gatherings down to certain arbitrary numbers of people (which is meaningless--any intermingling of disparate groups is a risk of a broader spread, kind of like an isolated firewalled LAN vs WAN), mandating masks that are ineffective, and arresting individual people out in the open in public places alone, etc. while destroying the economy in the process unnecessarily, and even possibly emboldening the spread by forcing locked down gatherings of people, or luring large compact gatherings even if outdoors, without having them tested first (e.g. elderly being forced into old folks homes, Trump’s rallies, etc.) Damn, that’s one long, run-on sentence.

In other words, barring some fantasy magic, there isn't a solution that's anywhere near 100% effective, but there are mitigating measures that help, established from past pandemics. Cloth masks weren't a viable component of any of those measures in this particular case due to the airborne, small size of this virus, and may very well have given people a false sense of security, which almost certainly lured people into situations where they were infected and/or became a spreader. A government funded mass production of N95 masks may have helped the spread, but they are very difficult to breath in and come with their own health concerns that may be just as bad as the virus itself if used on a mass scale for long periods of time. And yet, some medical professionals, whether through belief or social pressure, perpetuated falsehoods on both ends of the spectrum.

These are my own thoughts on the matter, anyway, formulated from all information I’m aware of.
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Never believe. Always question. Belief, a.k.a. bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology is the bane of skeptical, logical reason