[jussij]

Considering this part of his statement I think his message might have even more subtle than that:

but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!

I suspect at the time of the statement, health care works where struggle to get PPE, which would not have been helped by the run on masks by the general public.

In that context I see this a plea for the public to understand a mask in the hand of a medical worker is much more valuable than one in the hand of a member of the public. So lets try and help the medical staff before we try and help ourselves.