Your first sentence is completely incorrect - "masks don't do anything." Masks are doing harm to those who wear them. Breathing back in your own carbon dioxide where it goes right up your nose and into your brain and to that part of the brain where fear and paranoia come from is causing people to be more fearful and paranoid. Masks are compromising people's immune systems and doing real damage to those with any kind of respiratory issues. Masks are causing increasing respiratory pneumonia.

And lastly, another of the reasons masks are being pushed is so that the AI used to scan faces can be perfected to the extent that it will be able to identify people wearing them. So no, I don't think its as you say.