The advice to wear cloth masks early on in the pandemic was based on a soon to be outdated understanding of how Covid and other respiratory diseases spread. Most health authorities have still not fully caught up, wallowing in outdated science based on a misunderstanding of research describing the spread of tuberculosis.

Of course there is also the propaganda push to not accept the most recent science because no one wants to deal with Covid. Surgical and cloth masks are “better than nothing,” but it has become clear that the advice to wear those two types specifically early in the pandemic could never have combatted Covid to any effective degree.