Masks are more about protecting others than yourself. It stops you splashing people 20ft in front of you with a sneeze or cough, but unless it’s the high grade masks they don’t do a great deal to protect yourself.
So the purpose of masking up is to reduce transmission rather than prevent contracting it.
I guess the good thing about the vaccines is that in the UK we’re getting 50,000 new cases each day but just a tiny fraction going to hospital. Contrasting that to last winter when no one had the vaccine and with a similar infection rate 1,000’s were going into hospital each day.