Read an article on Mongolia of all places. Instead of insanely lying that masks weren't effective they just out and out told people that they needed to reserve N95 masks for hospitals and then deployed an army of (likely mostly) women to sew standard cloth masks.
Meanwhile, you still see people wearing valved n95s, which I'm to understand are less effective in preventing transmission from the wearer (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-Bay-... ). I saw that surgeon general tweet dozens of times from tut-tut types on social media at the onset of lockdown, but info on valved n95s is buried in a cdc faq: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use...