Or maybe our knowledge of the situation and the unknown virus was evolving? And the rate of asymptomatic cases, and the fact that they still spread the virus wasn't initially known/certain? Why the binary approach?
It has nothing to do with a binary approach. The anti-masks arguments were very much a red-herring argument really being all about on anti-hoarding and anti-panic arguments from unprepared institutions (despite hoarding taxpayers dollars for years). A couple of month earlier, just mentioning the damn thing was enough to get you banned from social media. I was even arguing about the difference between test positivity rate and actual cases (including asymptomatic ones) early on, especially wrt. seasonal flu numbers, being treated like a complete fool (and still am).
The amount of layers upon layers upon layers of ass covering about all this has been staggering.