And since February, we all learned a tremedous amount about Covid-19. I'll take advice from experts who change their opinion when data and information changes over any expert who never changes his opinion by virtue of having been right once early on. because the latter part is usually as much "luck" as anything else.
Many of the experts in Asia with first hand experience of dealing with SARS (eg professors Gabriel Leung, Yuen Kwok Yung etc [0][1]) were calling for masks to be worn in late January, or earlier even. Their simple advice has been right on the money and is basically unchanged since than.
Whereas the advice from the WHO and their dependents has been muddled, illogical, and inconsistent, with increasing amounts of 'wriggle room'
Also the hospitals where there are zero cases of staff infection and care homes free of infection spread are using PPE levels well above what the WHO recommends.
IMHO this shows how important cultural differences are. In Asia, it is kind of normal to wear a mask in public. At least Europe, not so much. So there is this barrier to overcome.
And then there is messaging. There are still not nearly enough PPE going around for medical professionals, back in february it was even worse. Calling for people to wear masks would have made this situation even worse. Now, this kind comes around to bite officials, it was still the right thing to do, if you ask me.
And then, back in February, Europe had a lot less cases.
