Is the White House unaware of the purpose for wearing masks? What about NYTimes reporters?

While a mask will provide the wearer some protection against Covid-19, masks are more effecting in protecting others from being infected by the mask-wearer. Just how effective this is, that's another issue – they don't seem very effective against aerosol-born infection.

This NYTimes article about the Trump White House is unclear about how White House officials understood mask-wearing and, for that matter, about how the article's writers, Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman, understand it. Nowhere do the reporters themselves explain the logic.

Consider this paragraph:

President Trump at times told staff wearing masks in meetings to “get that thing off,” an administration official said. Everyone knew that Mr. Trump viewed masks as a sign of weakness, officials said, and that his message was clear. “You were looked down upon when you would walk by with a mask,” said Olivia Troye, a top aide on the coronavirus task force who resigned in August and has endorsed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

That sounds like Trump himself regarded mask-wearing primarily as a means of protecting the wearer, but if person was really strong, they wouldn't bother.

And this:

Aides were divided on the risks. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and Dan Scavino, the White House social media director, were among the least concerned, colleagues said. They viewed themselves as protected because of the testing available to them and maintained that getting the virus was not a death sentence.

Ms. Hicks, a longtime aide who is one of the president’s closest advisers, was more concerned, colleagues said. She took more precautions than most others and sometimes wore a mask in meetings.

Again this sounds like mask-wearing is regarded as a defense against being infected, not as a defense taken on behalf of others, though one might read the second paragraph in the proper way.  Similarly, this statement might be construed as implying that mask-wearing was directed at others: "Only those aides who were interacting directly with the president received daily tests. Masks remained rare sightings."

This paragraph suggests that the Attorney General clearly believed that masks were primarily for the benefit of the mask-wearer:

At the Justice Department in May, Attorney General William P. Barr told a New York Times Magazine reporter who arrived in a mask for an interview that “I’m not going to infect you,“ and then sat by as an aide suggested, twice, that the reporter take the mask off. The reporter did.

On the other hand, this paragraph implies that Chief of Staff Mark Meadows understood the logic: "Mr. Meadows, who had been in close contact with the president in recent days, arrived at work without a mask, and continued to claim that a mask was not necessary because he had tested negative." That is, if he tested negative, then he wasn't infected so he didn't need to protect others from his exhalations.

There are other examples in the article, but that represents the range of examples. It's not clear from that who understands what, but the weight seems to be on an inadequate understanding and, by default, that applies to the NTimes reporters as well.

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Addendum: A good source of information on the efficacy of various kinds of masks (section 7). Basically, all masks provide some protection for others, though obviously some are better than others. Protection for the wearer varies.