The claim of a >50% reduction in the first linked study, 'Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany,' is not supported by the data. In some German cities there was no substantive change in infections after the introduction of mask mandates, in others there were decreased infections, and in others there were increases: https://files.catbox.moe/tgrm43.png Furthermore, the study focuses on Jena, but accounts for no other relevant factors in that city, the most significant of which being the fact that Jena had introduced the strictest quarantine measures in the country at that time. But the study does not acknowledge that fact as a contributing factor. This study is methodologically flawed and empirically incorrect. The second study, 'Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COV-19,' also failed to consider any simultaneous measures that were employed, which is one among many methodological flaws exhibited by this study. This study was so methodologically flawed that more than forty scientists issued a letter to the editors of PNAS recommending it be withdrawn: https://metrics.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj13936/f/files/pnas_loe_061820_v3.pdf Further, an evaluation of this study by scientists at the Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health also advised PNAS to retract the study: https://ncrc.jhsph.edu/research/identifying-airborne-transmission-as-the-dominant-route-for-the-spread-of-covid-19/ The limited scope of the third study ('droplets' and 'source control' are in actuality not a useful metric for the efficacy of masks in general) and the contravening results of a multitude of other similarly-focused studies is enough to call its accuracy into question. Finally, the Lancet study is severely flawed in numerous regards: seven of the studies analyzed in this meta-analysis were unpublished, non-peer-reviewed observational studies that are methodologically inadequate to guide any clinical practice; only four of the nearly thirty studies considered are studies of SARS-COV-2 specifically, with the others being studies of SARS-1 or MERS, which appear to have markedly different vectors of transmission; two of those four studies were misinterpreted by the authors of the Lancet study (ref 44 and 70), one of the others is statistically inconclusive (37), and the last of the four is a study of N95 respirators exclusively; only three of the studies considered in the meta-analysis are classified as relating to non-clinical settings - of those, one is misclassified as it actually relates to masks in hospital settings (50), one shows no benefit (69), and one is a methodologically flawed retrospective study of SARS-1 based on telephone interviews of patients (74). In summary, the authors of the Lancet study themselves acknowledge that the certainty of their evidence is low as all studies considered in this meta-analysis were observational. No randomized controlled trials were analyzed - which represent the highest standards of empirical data - presumably because no RCTs support the thesis that masks are effective at reducing infections. A professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto, Peter Jueni, assessed this study and concluded that it was "essentially useless": https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/man-sollte-der-oeffentlichkeit-nichts-vorgaukeln-780632651447 These studies are trash.