Not a fan of Trump but he can't really be expected to pull those masks out of his ass. He is still dependent on his supplier and guess who that is? Also in a non-medical setting without additional protective measures masks do very little, if anything, to prevent transmission or infection. Espescially for people at-risk masks might give them the feeling they're safe when really they are not.
No one would want masks that have been up his arse, we want the ones he was supposed to have kept FEMA stocked with, but didn't, in addition to the rest of the PPE needed, not just masks you know, the ones he was supposed to stockpile in January, but didn't. The ones he was supposed to procure but instead had his son in law F it all up and didn't, The ones he was supposed to make via Defense production act, but then didn't make anywhere near the demand for the front lines, let alone the grocery store, gas station, mail carriers and dollar store workers who work in prime conditions to mass spread it to those most vulnerable the fastest.
"Outside of a medical setting", is only due to people not understanding proper usage, it isn't rocket science here. We have had people in non medical fields that utilize it daily already to work in for years here. That is easily remedied with public broadcasts showing properly handling, you know like they did in CHINA of all places. China was able to even have their street cleaners in hazmat, but our physicians, cops,nurses, social workers, paramedics, hospital staff who cleans the COVID-19 rooms, grocery store workers could not even obtain barely acceptable PPE and STILL are rationing and Trump hasn't resolved the issue, at all here and is still pretending like it isn't a problem. Having PPE>>> Not having PPE in terms of safety. I am not just talking about Masks here BTW. Though not everyone needs full hazmat, some actually do. The people in the meat packing facilities, for example, likely need full hazmat. There are different levels of protection depending on the environment you are in. The worst part of this, is we have known this for a very long time now, and all of a sudden mass amnesia or something, for some strange reason people act like we haven't had people working in PPE since my grandfathers day's. But DUHUR under Trump's regime , instead of teaching people properly how to properly utilize PPE to protect themselves, they instead start passin out dem der bandannas so we can all look like cowboys and pretend like it is helping. You should also keep in mind that the authors of the previous study claiming masks were not effective have since retracted that study after review.
The purpose of "Keeping as many people from becoming infected as possible" right now is to buy time so that when you do go to the hospital, we have some means to treat you, because right now, we still have no tried and true method that is universally being taught to healthcare workers everywhere, so there is still a good chance you could come in to a hospital with COVID-19 and either 1) Get sent home and die at home because they didn't recognize your symptoms, 2) Die in the hospital with it because they are not trained yet in what to do treat it.
Everything is experimental right now,so basically they find out whether or not something will keep you alive or kill you right now by testing it on you. Once we have more data, we can start devising better treatments, as of now, it is up to each individual Physician and facility to determine their own course of treatment, even if it isn't one that works. Once we have some better options here, then we STILL have to have time to educate healthcare workers to understand what to do. THIS is why time is so important here above all else. The vaccine would be great, however, we need to figure out how to reduce the death toll in the meantime and improve favorable outcomes. Unless you want to be the "lab rat" here, you want to avoid contracting it right now if at all possible.