This is particularly damning given that we're also now being told that a bandanna or any piece of cloth is a suitable replacement for a mask. Assuming that's true, it's pretty hard to justify lying to people about mask efficacy for the first several months of the pandemic. Would people have listened if they were told: masks work, but are in limited supply so use a bandanna and save the mask supply for front-line doctors? Probably not completely, I'm sure many people would still have gone out and bought masks impacting the total supply. Would it have been worth it, looking ahead, to not lie to people and degrade their trust in medical professionals, so that in the future when you decide to reveal the truth to people that masks actually do work they'll believe you? I think it probably was, but who knows.