To be clear, there has never been good scientific evidence that masks are ineffective against respiratory viruses. I think WHO, CDC and Fauci made grave errors at the time by making the argument that mask-wearing by the general public "doesn't work". The clear (and quite understandable) fear was that there would be a run on masks by the general public, so instead of telling the truth ("we need the masks for healthcare workers") they made broader and confusing statements about the effectiveness of masks that were not supported by the underlying science. This had the terrible effect, as your post shows, of making people even more wary of scientific pronouncements. Mine is not an isolated viewpoint. There was a good opinion article in the Washington Post at the time by an influential researcher where she argued the same thing.

Contrarily, the good studies that have come out about HCQ have nearly uniformly shown their potential danger. There is simply no equivalence between the scientific data that HCQ is harmful and the data (that never existed mind you) that mask-wearing is ineffective.