People were told last year that home made cloth masks were perfectly fine. I applaud skepticism at new claims, made without scientific backing, that now not even one mask is enough.

My guess is that in order to increase the number of people wearing masks, they're trying a new scare tactic: maybe you should wear 2 or 3 masks. Maybe they hope that will cause people to wear at least one.

Gotta herd the cattle somehow, I guess.

It's pretty polarized in the US right now, so people will naturally lump people into the "pro-mask" camp and the "anti-mask" camp, and the latter is closely tied to a lot of anti-science views. It's an unfortunate heuristic we use a lot. You'll get it less if you provide more nuance and context, or signal that you do take things seriously. "We need to start using N95 and surgical masks because cloth masks don't work." won't get you called anti-science. (Maybe impractical, though surgical masks pretty widely available.)

To respond to your specific statement, part of the problem is that "don't work" is too blunt and not quite true. "Don't protect the wearer" might be true. "Barely protect the wearer" would be. "Don't provide strong protection for others" also true. But even a poorly fitted cloth mask is almost certainly better than nothing. (Of course, I'd also believe that they likely provide a false sense of security, leading to risk-taking that more than offsets their benefits.)

This ties in with one of my biggest frustrations of the whole pandemic, at least individual behavior: so many people's risk analysis is just sorting things into "safe" and "unsafe", rather than thinking in degrees. "Cloth masks don't work" is unhelpfuly binary and non-specific. (Though including "poorly fitting" makes it better -- "ensure proper fit" is actionable advice.)

And while efficacy of "cloth mask" vs. N95 is good to know, "cloth mask" is a super-broad category. I'll occasionally see people specify "single layer cloth masks", but the only single-layer cloth masks are gaiters, and even those are frequently folded over double.

How good is my 2- or 3-layer cloth mask? What materials should I use? (To be fair, I have seen some people answer this question.) Is it relevant that I can barely feel my breath through it or around the edges even if I blow hard? How much of a difference does fit make?

Ideally we'd all have and use good quality N95s, but we shouldn't make perfect the enemy of the good. We need information that will help us do better, rather than a binary "N95 good; everything else bad."

It's a narrow line you have to walk when relaying the science. Things are so polarized a nuanced/realistic view is hated by both "sides". But stick to the truth, eventually, and even if it's 3-6 months late, the press and eventually government will catch up to reality.

I think they may help by reducing the velocity of the particles that are ejected from a persons mouth, making things safer for people around them. But a loose cloth bandana around your face probably won't stop a virus.

Welcome to the outrage economy. Its great when you're on one side but sucks when you're on the other.

Anti-science means that you don't follow the given narrative in this day and age. There is very little solid science behind most of the covid measures. Basically we just trusted what China told us and followed suit.