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>Until 2020, healthcare authorities in the Western world were were certain that viruses could never remain airborne for extended periods of time.

"Healthcare authorities" are not necessarily scientists, they are professionals. Nor am I aware of them ever making this claim in the first place, at least never in any kind of coordinated way. Please provide a source.

If you're talking about masks for Covid, that was because the Trump administration bungled the mask situation so badly that we were critically short on masks[1]. It was decided that to minimize causalities, focus would be on making sure health care professionals got masks first.

1. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/n95-...