Fauci & CDC knew this the whole time. It was intentional. That is why Fauci reversed himself on masks early on— they weren’t getting enough cases to get political control. Making everyone mask up helped their cause.
That’s when Covid-19 became Davos-19.
My take is there wasn't a lot of real science involved with the early mitigation strategies. It was mostly guess work(political science). When the CDC recommended masking, the working theory was the virus spread mainly by respiratory droplets. I think the decision to mask was likely similar to the FDA decision to vax 5-12 year olds. Let's do it and see what happens.