In March 2020 the official recommendations coming from Hong Kong, China or Korea were the complete opposite to what the US, UK, Germany or the WHO were recommending.
While the former were pragmatic and -very importantly- had enough masks, the latter were actively discouraging people from using any kind of masks and especially the quality masks such as FFP3 (or even FFP2) which are designed to protect among other things against respiratory viruses.
Asian countries had mask stockpiles and could manufacture them, had the experience of SARS and were apparently quite content with the scientific evidence, limited as it was. Naturally, if one can't tell a pandemic from their own ass, doesn't have local mask production capacity and donated a huge chunk of their masks the limitations of the scientific evidence become very critical indeed.
Let's take a moment to remember how US and European politicians and medical professionals were confidently claiming at the beginning of 2020 that the virus would not reach the West and how there's nothing to worry about.
While the former were pragmatic and -very importantly- had enough masks, the latter were actively discouraging people from using any kind of masks and especially the quality masks such as FFP3 (or even FFP2) which are designed to protect among other things against respiratory viruses.
Asian countries had mask stockpiles and could manufacture them, had the experience of SARS and were apparently quite content with the scientific evidence, limited as it was. Naturally, if one can't tell a pandemic from their own ass, doesn't have local mask production capacity and donated a huge chunk of their masks the limitations of the scientific evidence become very critical indeed.
Let's take a moment to remember how US and European politicians and medical professionals were confidently claiming at the beginning of 2020 that the virus would not reach the West and how there's nothing to worry about.