I'd strongly encourage you to look into your mask hierarchy. Cloth and surgical masks are not particularly evidence based devices. Even N95s have a lot of pseudoscience supporting their use (minimal size of viruses). They probably do something -- but go around in a well fitting N95 mask and an active lifestyle and you'll see that it's simply infeasible.
Your commentary about medical professionals is bizarre -- of course fewer medical professionals catch covid. They are exposed to it nearly constantly and generally have functional immune systems. If you work in a hospital, something you'll notice is you just stop getting sick very much.
Everything is a game of tradeoffs. Cloth masks in particular are obviously not worth the tradeoffs. Surgical masks are likely not. Maybe N95 are in particular situations.
Someone on HN just bought and tested a ton of masks, including surgical masks. Surgical mask material does filter nearly as well as N95 mask material, and the difference is fit. Based on data reported by this guy with actual equipment to test masks, most of your assumptions are highly questionable.
Surgical masks are more fluid resistant than N95 masks, which is why they are used in hospital settings (the goal is to note contaminate the patients, not really about self protection that the N95 is better at). They are designed to solve different problems.
Surgical masks: Fluid resistant and provides the wearer protection against large droplets, splashes, or sprays of bodily or other hazardous fluids. Protects the patient from the wearer’s respiratory emissions. Does NOT provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection from inhaling smaller airborne particles and is not considered respiratory protection
N95 masks: Reduces wearer’s exposure to particles including small particle aerosols and large droplets (only non-oil aerosols). Filters out at least 95% of airborne particles including large and small particles.
The masks have and have always had completely different purposes. The fact that we are using both during this pandemic to protect against COVID not withstanding. Now, people are using surgical masks in novel new ways (with braces and such to try and retrofit a seal on them), but they were never intended for that.
Relevant to the comments about fluid resistance: the difference between 3m's medical N95 respirators and construction N95 respirators is often nothing more than color, being stamped with a lot #, and additional fluid resistance. For example, the 1860 vs 8210. [0]
Medical personnel using the construction respirators out of necessity can wear a surgical mask over them, it's something I've seen locally. (I don't know whether that's a practice that predates COVID 19)
Your commentary about medical professionals is bizarre -- of course fewer medical professionals catch covid. They are exposed to it nearly constantly and generally have functional immune systems. If you work in a hospital, something you'll notice is you just stop getting sick very much.
Everything is a game of tradeoffs. Cloth masks in particular are obviously not worth the tradeoffs. Surgical masks are likely not. Maybe N95 are in particular situations.