I think anyone who thought critically about it could see through this. It's not the masks are ineffective, it's that they're not necessary for the average person to be reasonably safe, and they're in short supply, so we should be focusing on mitigations that are available to the general public.

If you wash your hands frequently, don't touch your face, and maintain a safe distance from others, your risk goes down dramatically. If you add a mask to that, your risk goes down modestly. Everyone can do the first set of steps, but not everyone will have access to masks, and having more people panic about getting masks will likely cause more problems than we have already.

I feel like that was the intended message, but they weren't transparent about it. Trust is built over time and can be destroyed in an instant. Our leaders need to be much more careful.