If people still meet other people without masks, there will be infections. Hence, states will mask mandates will still have high number of cases.
This doesn’t mean that masks don’t work. They do, when people wear them.
And crucially, it doesn't mean that if everyone wears the mask e.g. on the bus, it isn't safer to take that bus. It is.
The latter matters for the vulnerable. Unless people wear masks in crowded indoors, it isn’t safe for them to be there.
Hence why we should all wear good masks in crowded indoor spaces.
The evidence shows that masks are not only totally ineffective against viruses but also damage the user's health. They were designed to prevent surgeons from sharing their liquid mucus. Masks are a sign of political compliance, nothing more. A lot of the evidence has been suppressed and censored (I wonder why?). Even the authorities dismissed the use of masks in March 2020 until it dawned on them that masks and lockdowns (also totally ineffective) were a way of exercising control and "masking" the fact that the experimental C19 vaccines were almost totally useless. In my local community of hundreds of vaccine-free, lockdown-free and mask-free individuals, we have had hardly any illness, no Sars-CoV-2 and no deaths.