> “There may be a day when we change our recommendations particularly for areas that have large spread going on about wearing cotton masks, but again the data is not there yet,” he continued. “We are continuing to follow it.”

Unfortunately, when science is concerned, looks like politicians simply need to couch what they say with "this is what we believe we know now, but things may change". Otherwise, when things do change, everyone comes out of the woodwork to accuse them of lying. There's no nuance possible: "They said this thing early on, and later things changed and now we know it's not true. They lied!"

A lot of people simply hold politicians accountable for the very first things that they say, and if they ever change their mind later, that's "flip flopping" and it's interpreted as evidence that the first thing they say was a deliberate lie! They just can't grasp this idea that truth constantly changes as we learn more about the world.