You can both understand that this is a serious, novel disease and also understand that the way those in authority responded was done to create an emergency with specific outcomes.

>It is important to appreciate that if masks contained filters capable of trapping viruses, the peripheral gaps around the masks would continue to permit the inhalation of unfiltered air and aerosols.

We all made a bunch of mask makers rich for no reason. Good thing I never wore one.

Also I remember seeing a video of some of these disposable masks being created in absolute squalor conditions in a third world country, newly assembled ones being thrown on a grimy pile in the floor. That's where your masks are from.