Your first link says not to unless you're sick, implying that they thought they were useful for people with the virus. The second link literally says that having supplies for healthcare workers was the main impetus for saying this.

This has stood up remarkably well, a year on we know that masks are mostly effective to prevent people spreading the virus and not to prevent contracting it and we know much more about how readily it spreads asymptomatically.

Please see the second photo of the second link where US surgeon general tweeted "Masks are NOT effective...".

I don't think they stood up to anything. We didn't learn much more.

We know masks work for a century, and these officials lied to prevent mask shortage.

It's very short-sighted and incredibly incompetent.

Did they know we could have worn cloth masks?