I'm with you. To me, it was pretty clear why they were making recommendations in the way that they did. There was no secret about why they wanted to limit the supply of masks going to the public at the start of the pandemic. They didn't know for sure how it spread, but they did know that the most important places to have masks were the hospitals. You need to be extraordinarily cautious there because every hospital worker that gets sick reduces the number of people available to deal with patients (and adds another patient). There was also concern about face touching if people not used to masks started wearing them, but I only recall seeing that being a concern when it came to sending children to school with masks.

Once the mask supply was able to meet demand and after they were reasonably certain it would protect against the spread of the virus, they adjusted their recommendations accordingly.

None of that is deceptive.