> I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that) very serious in TV explaining to all the citizens of the republic that we should not buy nor wear masks.
Ah! This one is actually a story of "the lesser of two evils".
You can't really tell people to buy masks where there is none available, and you can't really tell there is nothing to do unless you want to put every one in panic mode. You can't really trust people to act rationally in the presence of a new and unexpected situation that nobody trained for, and you can't tell them that you're also as unprepared as they are for that.
So, handle the situation like you want, there's no way you aren't damaging something. I guess it was easier to take a slight (to medium for some government staff, Olivier Véran) reputation hit and announce it to the press via your health minister, than risk a state-wide panic meanwhile you are fixing the mask situation (remember the stockpile was left in a degraded state and wasn't usable).
If you think of it, the only reason why getting vaccinated is not yet mandatory is because of the next elections in May. You wouldn't risk to alienate ~1/6 voters (again, they are the most motivated ones and they refused to get a shot despite not being allowed in restaurants), if it's not national-security-like important. So I suspect it will become mandatory either when we crossed the threshold where it's really dangerous (500.000 covid case per day, we're currently at 350.000), or after the elections, in june. Whichever comes first. With our current trajectory, you could expect the president or the prime minister to announce it in about two weeks, despite having said differently in previous announcements.