There was definitely no malice or intent to mislead by health authorities in this regard and the claim that there was has always struck me as a bizarre result o

There was definitely no malice or intent to mislead by health authorities in this regard and the claim that there was has always struck me as a bizarre result of selective reporting. You can go back a few months and the WHO went on record plenty of times regarding a couple of points - Health workers really need good PPE and there is a shortage - When infected people wear a mask, it reduces transmission - The benefits of a non-infected person wearing a mask are not super well understood/studied and this topic doesn't really come up much because our main audience is healthcare professionals So they said at one point, focus on getting the masks to health care workers, and then as mask supply increased they said the infected should wear them too, and now that cloth/paper masks are easy to obtain they say everyone should wear them. It was always a question of supply and availability, there was no conspiracy. If you looked beyond the headlines and looked at the context it was pretty clear.