BTW, if masks were so damn effective and necessary, then why did we see hundreds of politicians and other celebrities frolicking around out in public without them. Why?

Because there's a huge free rider issue with masks - or indeed, any NPI to control the spread of an infectious disease that reduces the chance of the wearer getting someone else sick, rather than the other way around.

At the time, the weight of the evidence was that masks prevented the wearer from spreading the disease to other people. If everyone wore masks, the disease would spread less quickly through the population - because many instances of transmission would be blocked by the mask.

The problem, though, is that as with any free rider problem, someone can get the benefits of the NPI even if they "cheat" and don't do it themselves. If everyone properly wears a mask, their community will have reduced impacts from Covid. If everybody but one person wears a mask, that's almost certainly still true. It's the sort of thing where there's very little consequence if one person doesn't do the thing, but the benefit ends up being lost altogether if a lot of people don't do the thing.

So selfish and narcissistic people (including some celebrities and politicians) cheat. That doesn't mean they didn't believe that masks helped save lives - they just didn't want to bear the inconvenience themselves.