It was a criminal lie, not manipulation or error, when Western governments and WHO declared face mask as inefficient in protecting public

Now, only now the Western media started to take some interview from DOCTORS - specialists - not officials with questions about face-masks. Why? Because it has already come to a point where thousands of usual people started to ask this question.
Of course, the Western media likes nothing better than talking about science and its authority nowadays when it comes to, say, the problem of global warming (though even on this topic the media prefers inviting not real professional climatologists, but obediently and blindly citing and regurgitating officials, the image of whom the media deliberately misrepresents as scientists).
In this respect the media bears no less, but actually more moral responsibility for all the consequences of this pernicious lie - the lie that the face masks are inefficient for use by general public and its protection against COVID-19.

While any governments are prone to manipulate and lie, it is a special moral and social duty of the media in democratic countries (or those who dare to call themselves that) to critically test and challenge the statements and acts of the State, let alone supranational organizations even more prone to corruption, and hold it to account thereby controlling it and protecting the interests of the people (the friend of whom the media stopped being in the 21st century). Instead the media has behaved as a a ignominious boot-licking extension of the press-service of the Western governments themselves, and the price of it may be hard to overestimate.

This is just one of many (but very pricey and illustrative one) demonstrations of what happens to democracies when the main pillar and guarantor of their democracy - the MEDIA - gives in (more on the topic of the massive degeneration of the media in the West in the 21st century and the existential threat it poses to Western democracy and values see https://dr-world.blogspot.com/2017/11/ongoing-destruction-of-western-media.html).

Now we are starting to see the first headings along the lines of "Should all Americans be wearing face masks to protect against coronavirus?" Absolutely they should, and not only Americans but all Western countries.

All Western governments from the get-go lied that the face-masks are "inefficient" for protection of general public against coronavirus - sorry it wasn't just a manipulation or error but it was a classic criminal LIE on a massive scale, and likely a very pricey lie in economic terms, and, much more tragically, in terms of human lives. Regarding masks and their use and usefulness in the context of infections spread by respiratory droplets see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/can-face-mask-protect-me-coronavirus-covid-19-myths-busted

The US State went even further: they didn't just take a neutral position, but they - CDC - ACTIVELY DISCOURAGED people from using face masks. There is a big difference between "not recommending using" or "recommending NOT using".
Of course, pardon the sarcasm, those face masks are just used by doctors for a better professional image.. Indeed, what use are the face masks against a virus with the PRIMARY way of infection through the airborne respiratory droplets.
Then this lie "justified" - predictably - another wrong: doing nothing for months instead of issuing strategic production and purchase orders for millions of new masks - all this precious time was lost. Later the governments will come up with mendacious excuses like "oh, this is what WHO (World Health Organization) told us" - officials, not scientists, a corrupted supranational organization democratically neither elected nor controlled. WHO is another beauty: regarding this corrupted entity that could be a good text example of what the cluster of conflict of interest is one can check this comprehensive write-up with names, dates, connections etc: https://www.globalresearch.ca/politics-corruption-who/5702045

There is quite a chance that the State sycophant - the media - will be regurgitating and amplify those mendacious excuses, because it has already become a "partner in crime" with the governments and starting revealing their lies after pandemic will immediately bring up the question of where was the "friend of the People".

Meanwhile Eastern countries South Korea, China, Japan - countries so often used by the same meida as benchmarks of efficiency in fighting COVID-19  - unlike the West, did this almost self-evidently sound thing, thanks to ignoring WHO and listening to SCIENTISTS and epidemiologists: used face masks from start, and, for the same reason, made strategic orders to enhance their production, supplies and, at the initial stages rationing them if need be. See https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-korea-rations-face-masks-in-coronavirus-fight-11584283720