The US seems to have relied heavily on cloth masks, even long after the shortages were over. From my understanding, surgical masks are much more effective (whil

The US seems to have relied heavily on cloth masks, even long after the shortages were over. From my understanding, surgical masks are much more effective (while often being more comfortable) than community/cloth masks. (I don't have a source for this on hand, but the German government did ban cloth masks/require at least surgical masks in many areas for this reason.) I suspect a lot of that was out of a desire to not appear as backtracking on a previous position.