> Note that masking is only part of the strategy.

Never said it wasn't.

> Plenty of countries managed to effectively flatten the curve regardless of the availability of N95 masks

"Flatten the curve" is a post-failure strategy to minimize secondary losses due to overwhelming the hospitals until we have a vaccine with enough efficacy to reach herd immunity and eradicate the virus. That latter part never happened.

> Statistical analysis showed that the odds of infection were about half for people who reported wearing a mask in public compared with people who didn’t.

Sure, and that's not even limiting the scope to N95-level masks.

> For people who wore masks “all of the time” (instead of “some of the time” or “most of the time”) the estimated effect was even more significant.

Naturally.

> Not unexpectedly, N95/KN95s were found to reduce the odds of infection compared with people who didn’t wear any mask. To me, the surprising thing is how effective they were, reducing the relative odds by 83%. Cloth masks and surgical masks were found to be less effective.

Sounds about right.

> All masks provide some non-trivial amount of protection. Certainly better than not doing anything, especially if you do so consistently.

Never said they didn't.

> Except I’ve been at parties where people with COVID showed up and no one else got sick.

Useless anecdote.

> And this is anecdotal and not quantitatively scientific.

Correct.

> I don’t know what your threshold is for “as it needs to be”.

Enough to reduce the effective "R" rate of transmission to below 1 and to keep outbreaks ever smaller and more localized.

> Mine is “the healthcare system doesn’t fall apart”.

Post-failure strategy.

> [Describing how the vaccine could have been rolled out more effectively.]

Yes, it could have been. But even so, by now almost everyone has been immunized either by the vaccine or prior infection and it's still killing huge numbers.

> N95 masks aren’t necessarily comfortable and people will avoid wearing them even when there’s a mandate.

I don't advocate for a mandate. Mandates lead to malicious compliance and people rebelling whenever they can to prove they still have autonomy.

> Half the time I saw people with masks covering just the mouth.

Like that. Fortunately, N95 are thicker and less likely to droop.

> And at the end of the day, your eyes and nose are likely other vectors for infection (eg studies that showed that people with glasses had a statistically significant lower rate of infection).

Practically insignificant.

> What I’ve heard from people with kids is that kids are an amazing infection vector for the whole family for any disease, COVID included.

Yes, household transmission is still an issue. We need to guarantee that people with Covid in the household can quarantine without repercussions.

> I fully expect that even with an over abundance of masks, nothing actually meaningfully changes. You may disagree with that conclusion

I do.

> N95 would be nice, but any and all masks, especially if worn correctly and consistently, offer meaningful statistically significant reduction in transmission rates

The difference between N95 and a surgical mask is far more than statistically significant. (See your own link.)

> Evolution tells us the virus will have pressures from immune systems and vaccines so it’ll probably evolve (few viruses these days can be fully and permanent eliminated by a vaccine).

A virus filtered out before it can enter the host never has a chance to evolve.

> However, I did think that transmission rates will be reduced at least a little bit (statistically appears true although with high enough variance that it can feel false) and more importantly death rate from COVID will plummet (also true).

No argument on the "little bit".

>> Blatantly false. It's still killing several multiples of the flu. And now the flu is back on top of that.

> Huh? Aren’t you basically agreeing with me then?

No.

> To me, the flu returning and COVID running more rampant is a clear sign that people stopped masking and socially distancing

Well, I agree with that. Masks also help prevent the flu better than the vaccines, and we don't even need to develop new masks every year. Just produce enough of the right types of masks that they're free/effectively free so they can do the bulk of the work, and all the other layers of defense can have the best foundation to start from.

Whew, that was a tiring Gish Gallop. Got any more?