It's unclear what you're arguing. The leading experts (Fauci/CDC) who most Americans were paying attention to were not providing this shading of meaning which you are trying to impute to them. That would be the case if they said something like N95 masks will provide excellent protection for you from the virus if worn correctly, but we have a shortage, so please make do with alternatives so that health care workers have access to them. That is not what they said. Instead they sacrificed credibility at the altar of expediency to the detriment of future trust.
What's reductive is assuming that people are motivated exclusively by self-interest instead of trusting them to make good decisions when told the truth.
> When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.
> But, when you think masks, you should think of health care providers needing them and people who are ill... It could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it.
He said that there's a shortage, and that he didn't trust that people would wear the masks correctly. I remember that most of the early anti-mask guidance I heard was claims that they weren't likely to prevent yourself from getting infected because: the mask would become an infectious surface; and people wouldn't handle the mask as infectious.
> It is mainly to prevent those people who have the virus — and might not know it — from spreading the infection to others.
> U.S. health authorities have long maintained that face masks should be reserved only for medical professionals and patients suffering from COVID-19, the deadly disease caused by the coronavirus. The CDC had based this recommendation on the fact that such coverings offer little protection for wearers, and the need to conserve the country's alarmingly sparse supplies of personal protective equipment.
Sounds more like you chose to ignore it. My family was wearing medical-grade disposable facemasks and socially distancing from February 2020 on the basis of healthcare advice.
Hunting for a bogeyman in retrospect is the bad-faith narrative of the mediocre culture warrior. Good luck with your undifferentiated rage or whatever.
What's reductive is assuming that people are motivated exclusively by self-interest instead of trusting them to make good decisions when told the truth.