WHO recommend we as public should ONLY wear a surgical mask if sick or dealing with the sick, to keep the N95 best masks for the medical staff globally.

CDC recommend we SHOULD wear something as a cover because if we are symptomatic it can prevent spreading viruses (hurrah for DIY face coverings)

“It seems kind of intuitively obvious that if you put something—whether it’s a scarf or a mask—in front of your nose and mouth, that will filter out some of these viruses that are floating around out there,” says Dr. William Schaffner, professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University. ..

…The only problem: that’s not likely to be effective against respiratory illnesses like the flu and COVID-19. If it were, “the CDC would have recommended it years ago,” he says. “It doesn’t, because it makes science-based recommendations.”

https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/

As before, the CDC does not recommend that the public wear N95 respirators, which filter out 95% of particles in the air. These masks are in short supply, and they should be reserved for health care workers who are exposed to the virus on a daily basis, the CDC said. Nor should the public wear surgical masks, which are also needed by healthcare workers, the CDC said….https://www.livescience.com/cdc-recommends-face-masks-coronavirus.html…. so let us see…

There are a helluva lot more public in the world than medical workers, those workers are working very close to the sick, and should be wearing the masks anyway….But there are so many more of us as public that are in the same vicinity of others and even breathing in their exhaled air (as we move into spaces they were in, at say, the supermarket) and seeing as we are spreadling it asymptomatically, we SHOULD ALL be wearing some from of at least closed cloth mask, homemade or purchased.