It was obvious nonsense, and did not comfort me as I watched an avoidable catastrophe become, day by day, an unavoidable one; politicians caring more about pacifying the populace with platitudes than about taking measures to render SARS-CoV-2 extinct in the wild – measures which would have been several orders of magnitude cheaper than the extended pandemic lockdowns, disabilities and trauma, loss of life, and now a new disabling endemic disease we're going to have to fight the hard way, for centuries, until it can finally go the way of smallpox.
Once we had a bit more information in a rapidly evolving situation public health advice switched to recommending masks and stayed that way for years.
We cannot possibly expect public health advice to get everything right immediately during a once-in-a-century pandemic and this error should definitely not be used as a general "wow public health officials are dumb idiots or engaged in a malicious conspiracy", as this error is often used.