When someone breaths or coughs or sings or whatever that person doesn't expel the virus, they expel droplets that contain the virus. And while a cloth mask wouldn't stop an individual virus it is certainly effective at trapping those droplets.
Without the mask those droplets are expelled into the air and some of those droplets become aerosolized, hanging in the air for significant periods of time and potentially spreading to other people.
(Studies show that most of those droplets hit the floor within three or four feet. That's where the 6' guideline comes from - someone just added a couple extra feet for good measure.)
edit: to piggyback onto your analogy, imagine that mosquito encased within a softball. That chain link fence would stop the softball (and therefore stop the mosquito) from passing thru.
AlbaNY_Ram
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2021 10:10AM by AlbaNY_Ram.