Amazingly there is not even one double-blind study published in a peer-reviewed journal providing compelling evidence that surgical masks have any effect whatsoever on transmission of infection—even in the operating theater.

Surgeons, of course, will never stop wearing them because century of tradition....but one's exhaled breath escapes freely through and around the edges of a mask with ease, and along with it come any aerosolized particles and microbes that may be present.