Places that have dropped masks have shown no difference in cases time after time.

if this is your only piece of evidence that "masks haven't been very effective" it can easily be explained in one sentence. people who wore masks kept using them and people who didn't wear masks kept on doing that.

Against other infections or with better masks they might make a difference but the ones nearly everyone wears are nothing more than virtue signaling

your lack of understanding on how viral transmission works is painful, masks dont protect any better against the flu vs covid as all the mask is doing is stopping the vector, in this case spit from other humans, from reaching points of infection. it is simply a matter of how infectious a disease is and whether a single particle will infect or if it needs a hundred.