RE: TO MASK OR NOT TO MASK - Part 1

There was recently a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that concluded that wearing masks in your day to day activities was pretty useless. Where masks might statistically help is during prolonged interactions within 6 feet of someone. For example having a conversation of more than a few minutes with someone you are closer than 6 feet away from. So wearing a mask while shopping in a grocery store, not particularly useful. Wearing a mask while sitting in a bar or restaurant while in close proximity to others not in your household, possibly useful but also impractical.

Then there's the question of why wearing a mask for this is any more important than for the flu. Some statistics that are somewhat illuminating... The average age of death and the average age of death due to covid-19 are nearly identical. In addition, the number of overall deaths has actually been a little below average recently. So how dangerous is COVID-19 really?

Thank you for reading and commenting.
Almost all sources now recommend the wearing of masks.

It's very clear now that it is much more deadly than the flu.
USA - Flu related deaths as below 34 200 death in comparison with Covid19 deaths
139 108. Almost 4 times more than the flu and it is far from over.

CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1). The number of influenza-associated illnesses that occurred last season was similar to the estimated number of influenza-associated illnesses during the 2012–2013 influenza season when an estimated 34 million people had symptomatic influenza illness.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Older people are more at risk but people from almost every age group have died.

https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age