In January/February 2020, there was about as much evidence for either of those propositions. The evidence on masks was thin, and limited to use by professionals in a medical setting. Existing studies of their use as practiced in parts of Asia were inconclusive.
Yes, I know: Masks seem like a really good idea. The whole concept makes sense. There's a theory as to how they work.
But medicine stopped believing any theory as to what may or may not be useful around a hundred years ago, after killing countless people with bloodletting, mercury, vapour-vaping, whatever... All those interventions may seem ridiculous to you, but they all followed some entirely believable logic that accounted for all the known facts as long as one did not actually run a double-blind trial.
It's instructive to look at the fate of two of those interventions: masks and that quinine. We now know the former works and the latter does not. And I'll be immodest and mention that I considered masks to be effective from day one, while spending only about a week drinking Gin Tonics for health reasons, until the full extend of the seediness of that French doctor pushing it became public (and I had to go back to a different set of reasons for the drinks).
But at about the same time along each treatment's timeline, there really was more actual, or at least claimed to be factual, evidence for the Malaria-malarky than there was for masks. And while I'm supremely excellent at predictioneering, I utterly fail when trying to distill some set of specific rules to follow.
Maybe there's wisdom in numbers? Do a survey in the US right now, and you'll probably get 55 % to advocate for masks, 42 % believing in the insect-repellant. And that's about four months after the science on those questions has been settled.