> I'm also living in a country where its government argued against mass adoption of surgical masks and gloves, but the argument was no way close to your claim.

I'm not making wrong claims, because I'm not saying all governments did the same thing. In my country the messaging was definitely as I said. The argument was that masks wouldn't work for laypeople because they needed specialized training to be worn right (another clear lie, my wife is a doctor, has always used masks and never got such training beyond a few simple instructions that can be given in 30 seconds. And that did not change with the pandemic) and we would probably make the problem even worse by wearing them incorrectly, touching them with our hands and contracting the virus.

If your goverment was more sincere and still succeeded in preventing people from hoarding masks, I suppose it can be counted as evidence against my claim that lying was actually the best thing to do. But not all societies are equal. In my country I'm quite convinced that if the government had given the same messaging as in yours, people would have hoarded and made the shortage in healthcare worse. Although of course, this is just from my subjective impression of how my countrymen work and not a scientific claim.