(Howard #16) is a pre-edition of the 2020 meta-review with the same lead author. He concluded that “there was insufficient evidence to provide a recommendation on the use of face barriers without further measures”, “Nine trials compared with masks and without masks. … The pooling of the nine trials did not show a statistically significant reduction in influenza-like illness. Two of the nine trials were conducted on healthcare workers. Most of the trials were conducted with surgical masks or respirators.
Jefferson T, Jones M, Al Ansari LA, Bawazeer G, Beller E, Clark J, et al. Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. Part 1 – Face masks, eye protection, and removal of the person: systematic review and meta-analysis. MedRxiv 2020:2020.03.30.20047217.
https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047217https://archive.md/WfL8bIn ambulatory influenza patients, N95 respirators compared to medical masks as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2749214https://archive.md/KYAbaThe use of face masks by healthcare workers has not been shown to be beneficial in terms of cold or flu symptoms.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19216002/https://archive.md/qOouKA study published in 2015 in the British Medical Journal BMJ Open found that fabric masks were penetrated by 97% of the particles and could increase the risk of infection by retaining moisture or being used repeatedly.
Moisture retention, reuse of fabric masks and poor filtration can increase the risk of infection.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.longhttps://archive.md/H5IQs 
