> You’re correct and I’m aware of their use in industry. I was unclear but what I meant was that they’re not commonly used by the general public for COVID protection outside of medical settings.

That's not actually true either, or not true for the reason you assume. I'd say I've seen about 5-10% of public mask-wearers with more-available KN95s, which does count as "common" (just not ubiquitous). N95s were extremely unavailable for a long time, but early in the pandemic, I saw at least that much N95 use (given lots people like me probably had a few laying around, that then got used up).