And there's no better way to help the virus than lying to people about the masks. Even the Chinese government didn't lie about masks, while all the western governments did. If masks became a strategic product, then there are enough laws to regulate them (and France did so).
- All mask shaped objects were quickly taken off the shelves. Including snorkeling masks that could be adapted!
- Health professionals received a limited number of masks. For example nurses had 2 FFP2 masks a day, in practice, except for those who worked with covid patients, most had only surgical masks. Pharmacists sometimes didn't have any mask at all (they should have had surgical masks)
- A lot of the masks were in poor condition and of dubious quality, they really tried everything they had. Some came from the stockpile intended for the 2009 flu pandemic.
- Masks regularly "disappeared". As an anecdote from a nurse, she worked in a psychiatric hospital and they didn't have masks (again, a mysteriously lost package). A guy came in, the leader of a big company and was appalled by the situation. He came back with 3 boxes, full of masks and told the personnel "this is for you, these will not got to the director's office, I will come back in a few days and if I don't see the masks, someone is going to have problems!".
- A friend of mine, a pharmacist, was constantly harassed for masks by random people. She had (not enough) masks available for doctors, but she was lucky when he could have one herself. And people had the nerve to ask for her own mask. And on a side note, at one point, they didn't even have enough ethanol for hand sanitizers!
Internationally, China kept most of the masks for themselves, and the ones foe export were sold to the highest bidder on the airport ground. Some countries had local factories, but were lacking in material, especially meltblown fabric, but sometimes even the metal nose strip.
It was bad, really bad. Things started to improve when volunteers started to make fabric masks. Initially, we were dubious about the efficiency of fabric masks, there was a fear that they would make droplets finer and more airborne, we still are, but it seems that they are better than nothing.
I want to think that the deception was a bad thing and that people deserved the whole truth, but I am glad I wasn't part of the government during that time.
None of what you mention can excuse or justify the blatant lies of the French government. A democratically elected government should not lie to its population, under no circumstances. You don't send a spokesperson on national TV to tell the population that masks are useless, and that the general population wouldn't even know how to use one(!!!).
I suspect the French population will be far more forgiving of a government fuckup followed by an apology and visible and effective efforts to fix the situation, than an outright lie that was only necessary in the first place because of arrogance, complacency and incompetence.