You admit yourself this was manipulation. "The risk was that people would continue to meet and mix while sort of wearing a mask..." Their job isn't to play 3-

You admit yourself this was manipulation. "The risk was that people would continue to meet and mix while sort of wearing a mask..." Their job isn't to play 3-dimensional chess with human behavior. It's to communicate public health messages in a way that is both effective and accurate. I agree that the science was (and is) not very clear regarding mask usage. But if the messaging from the beginning had been "everyone wear a cloth mask inside, it might help" we maybe could have skipped this entire insane anti-mask movement.