Masks are great for stopping you from sneezing all over someone else; they are not and never have been the panacea of disease protection.

When you misstate the advice given, you may think this is sheer hyperbole, but it falls under the over arching simple term of lies.

Masks were introduced in advice and one of the purposes was to slow down the spread of the virus. The idea was that by slowing the spread the hospitals would be less stressed and not overwhelmed. We don't want to get to the point where a hospital has to practice triage, but we did, at multiple points and times across the USA. The ability to administer good care suffers. Stressed out health care workers make more mistakes. So you could help out by wearing a mask.

For instance Japan: Avoid “Three Cs” (closed spaces, crowded places, and close-contact settings), and wear masks. They are a mask culture, along with S Korea and Singapore. If you take a look, Japan and S Korea are cold, with snow, not high humidity and a fair share of cloud cover - so it was good conditions for a spread, they slowed it way down. Singapore isn't cold, but lots of air conditioning and their advice covered masks, etc.

I wore N95s at first and then S Korean K95s. My wife wore N95s at first and then k95s with a copper mesh mask over that. (Filipina stars were wearing these copper mesh masks so it was stylish) :) Where we were people cooperated but some people didn't cover their nose with the mask. Elsewhere in the world, we could see some people let their egos and politics get in the way during a pandemic and that is not what you want to do.

P.S. Triage in the Philippines meant people sitting in their cars in the back of hospitals with oxygen tanks next to the cars and hoses going thru cracked and fully open windows. It meant poor people on cots or cushions on sidewalks back there with jury rigged leantos for any rain. Masks were worn, but not well.