Then logic of this baffles me. Doctors don't wear cloth masks. If they had wanted to save medical grade masks for hospital settings, all they had to do is put a moratorium from the major sellers (drug stores, supermarkets, amazon/target/walmart) to stop selling medical grade masks. They could have told the public "we don't know if they'll work, but if you are concerned make yourself a cloth mask". Remember eventually bandanas and gaiters were said to be acceptable. They didn't need to come out and say they didn't work. The reason why they said they didn't work is because the consensus around the research on flu at the time was they didn't work.
But then magically they switched to cloth masks work, AND said bandanas and gaiters worked. So why the changed? One, yes they were more readily available after a month, but that's not the issue...bandanas after all were always available. Further, the Spain mannequin study showing that cloth and bandanas/gaiters were less effective (which lead to the banning of these items in several European countries) came out in May of 2020. In the end it boils down to essential workers.....Europe in its harsh lockdown had a very limited definition of essential workers with only public works, hospitals, pharmacies, certain largely food and energy related industries and supermarkets open and everyone else was in lockdown and they made a concerted effort to get medical grade masks to these people. But the United States had a very loose definition of lockdown, with in California bike shops, liquor stores, marijuana shops, plumbers and aircon, pool shops, box stores, netflix and TV, warehouses, delivery drivers and takeout open. That's a lot of essential workers in a country with a very large population. You couldn't send all these essential workers to the slaughter in a panic with no protection, so it became convenient to say cloth masks, bandanas and gaiters work to prevent a panic. As to the latter two, does any still believe that or how ridiculous is it that people actually thought running around like bandidos would do something? And once you are in this particular culdesac, it's particularly hard to climb out of it once you've worked everyone up, having taken time from getting from "everyone be a bandido" to "cloth masks are little more than facial decorations".
