I wear one in crowded settings, and try to wear one on public transport whenever I think on. Everytime I don't have one on and I hear someone cough, my skin crawls.
On the plus side, I don't think I had a cold this season just gone, so clearly masks made a difference there.
A few thoughts related to your post but not directed at it or you. It is interesting that this perception is prevalent among people, but it's actually almost contradictory to the science. It's just a different interpretation of end effects. Masks do help minimizing risk to a healthy person who wears them, but (not quite clear yet) somewhere in the single percent to 10% range. They definitely help containing the spread if people who carry the virus wear them. (Unfortunately those are usually the asses who don't want to wear masks). Studies have been done on the original N95, medical and cloth masks; N95 are the best, but even they don't offer very high protection. And people associate the cheap KN95 with the N95 properties; day and night difference. Aerosols in Earth condition (<30 micron droplet size) facilitate the virus transfer and the N93 has 30 micron pore size. The many interlaid layers help trapping the aerosols, static charge helps, but some sizeable fraction especially in the 5-10 size range still goes through.
The other aspect is that the minimum viral load required to develop the disease is not known. At the beginning of the pandemic people assumed 100 (much lower than 1000 for similar corona viruses). I have not seen that revised. But if this is true, it means that the good masks would offer far higher protection against normal cold than Covid (if you get, e.g., 200-500 viral bodies through you won't get cold, but you'll get Covid).
Many things will become more clear with time, there are just too many unknowns here. But I agree with the bottom line of your post - masks help limit the spread. With the caveat that either everyone wears them, or those with symptoms must always wear them. Otherwise the help is minimal. I think the US has excellent examples for that - comparing data from states that mandated masks for the longest time versus states that ignored them from the off. The new reports coming from everyone is that it didn't make much difference to the spread of the virus despite popular opinion. In my mind, this is because those few assholes who didn't care, got sick, and don't wear a mask are instrumental in spreading the disease.
