We understand why he did it, there was an absolute crisis of PPE and there was fear that medical staff wouldn’t be able to get any masks because of regular folks hoarding.

That’s fine. No one is denying that he’s a very smart, well-intentioned health scientist doing his absolute best to help the country.

But don’t pretend he didn’t say what he said.

He said it on 60 Minutes, and he explained why he said it months later to the Washington Post.

Here’s the real problem — despite his good intentions, when people in authority tell you that they had, or perhaps still have to, lie to you “for your own good” — that’s not a hallmark of a free society. That is the hallmark of an authority which considers the public a problem to be dealt with and it dissolves trust.

I do wish he'd said, instead, that masks provide asymmetric protection -- protecting the wearer less than protecting others from the wearer, and that ideally everyone would wear masks to protect each other, but that there were extreme shortages, and that first responders needed to be the priority for now. Or, something that included enough information to remain straightforwardly valid over time despite the situational dynamics.

edit -- in a July 15 interview with InStyle magazine [1] he said: "I don't regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct..."

"When it became clear that the infection could be spread by asymptomatic carriers who don't know they're infected, that made it very clear that we had to strongly recommend masks."

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-...

[1] https://www.instyle.com/news/dr-fauci-says-with-all-due-mode...

He was understandably trying to prevent people from buying and using surgical masks because there was a dangerously limited supply. When the supply was secure he advocated masking.

It’s this sort of talking around the issue, Jesuitical hair splitting rather than conceding what is manifest that makes discussing this so frustrating.

I appreciate skygazer quoting his exact words so that I can form my own opinion.

It happens to differ from yours.

The world isn't black and white. New information is obtained. Sometimes experts have to change their recommendations.

I, personally, do not believe Fauci was lying on 60 minutes. I think he was making a recommendation based on the information he had at the time. Soon after, that changed. He changed his recommendation.

https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...

> JUN 12, 2020

> "Masks are not 100% protective. However, they certainly are better than not wearing a mask. Both to prevent you, if you happen to be a person who may feel well, but has an asymptomatic infection that you don't even know about, to prevent you from infecting someone else," said Fauci. "But also, it can protect you a certain degree, not a hundred percent, in protecting you from getting infected from someone who, either is breathing, or coughing, or sneezing, or singing or whatever it is in which the droplets or the aerosols go out. So masks work."

> So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning?

> "Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."

I watched the video, to make sure that I wasn't missing additional context, and I don't see it (though these videos do get edited, I've been shocked plenty of times once I saw the full raw footage vs the condensed, edited footage).

Now, he doesn't quite say the claim I wrote above. His argument (I am now condensing it) is: at the time, we were unaware masks offered protection, physical distancing was our best strategy, and we wanted to keep our limited supply of masks for medical personnel.

So, how can masks not be effective and yet also be so effective that we must save our critical supply for medical personnel? Well, one possibility is that medical personnel treat all kinds of illnesses, and that N95s are generally critical for this work, and we wouldn't want them to go without while the public buys them up for an ineffective use. Another could be that they are effective and critical against the virus when you must be around sick people constantly, but not especially effective when you're about town. These are difficult concepts to convey, especially in a soundbite or short interview driven format.

Unfortunately, Fauci's line or reasoning does lend support to the claim that he knowingly mislead the public, for what he (perhaps reasonably) believe was the greater good. I still am open to the possibility that he was trying to make a nuanced point and either bungled or it was lost in short media format.

Medical personnel wear masks for more than just protection from Covid. Surgical and N95 mask availability is critical to the day-to-day operation of a medical facility, is it not?

Here's my interpretation: initially, he was concerned about a run on masks and believed masks provided minimal protection against Covid. Later, as mask availability was no longer as much of an issue and as there was increasing evidence that wearing masks might help contain the spread of Covid, he changed his recommendation.

I recall there being an evolution in thinking around mask wearing, from masks being worn to protect the wearer to masks being worn to protect people from an asymptomatic wearer. Lots of studies posted here about effectiveness or lack thereof of non-N95 masks.

I also recall us learning about asymptomatic spread, the degree to which to virus was aerosolized, and so forth.

Yes... this is exactly what I meant when I wrote "one possibility is that medical personnel treat all kinds of illnesses, and that N95s are generally critical for this work, and we wouldn't want them to go without while the public buys them up for an ineffective use."

Unfortunately, if this was Fauci's point, he did not communicate it well. Some of what appears to be deception may just be bungling an answer that requires a lot of nuance (though again, after what I've seen from hostile or even just lazy soundbite-driven media, at this point I just wouldn't be surprised he actually did say this hat some point and it was not reported or just edited out of a longer interview).

To me - and this is my own standard, not a set of rules - whataboutism a fallacy is specifically used to avoid acknowledging a problem by derailing the discussion.

If a person fully and thoroughly acknowledges a problem, and does not minimize the importance of that problem, then it is not whataboutism to point out the hypocrisy of the other side during the analysis - especially if someone denies or minimizes the existence of bias from the other side.

In short, an article like this from The Atlantic (including a reference to an early pandemic NYTimes article that claimed advocating for travel bans was racist) is not whataboutism. These are not just reasonable but important observations:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/03/what-...

And lastly, while I agree with you about much of Trump and right wing media, I was pretty aghast with the times, WaPo, and other media outlets (this link also from The Atlantic). To be fair the National Review also got this wrong at first.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must...

As an aside, The Atlantic is an interesting publication - it is a very left leaning, but has a number of writers who are absolutely willing to go straight at the left when they feel it is behaving hypocritically.

>...> when people in authority tell you that they had, or perhaps still have to, lie to you “for your own good” — that’s not a hallmark of a free society.

True and well put.

If was stupid anyway. “Masks don’t work and also we need them for healthcare workers.” Did anyone actually believe this?

As well, the aspect of HCW shortages, while real, inverts the "front line" of the pandemic to be in the clinics and ICUs and not ordinary gatherings. Prevent spread in the latter and you won't need so much of the former.

Fauci also made a mess of AIDS too, so his track record with public health is...questionable.

You are being idealistic. Even if 99,99% of americans would not hoard masks, the remaining 0,01% could hoard virtually all of the supply. I don't believe you genuinely believe that literally every single american would "not hoard masks when asked to".

I'll be happy to take your word for this if you want to confirm "yes" you actually believe this. Otherwise I will assume you don't actually believe this, you were just throwing rhetoric around.

To these I would say:

1. Public health officials start out more trusted than controversial politicians, but they don’t have many die-hards who will just believe no matter what either. So, someone like Fauci has more to lose from being dishonest. I don’t think we can conclude that because Trump “got away with it” that Fauci can too.

And even if he were as impervious to criticism on this front as Trump, 40% of people trusting someone in his position wouldn’t be nearly good enough.

2. I’m not sure about this one. I think Trump got a lot of (completely deserved) criticism for being mendacious. It’s true that some of the people who always gave him a pass criticize Fauci for dishonesty, but what are you donna do? People are hypocrites. I think more people would trust public health experts if they were more honest, and that’s all that matters to me.

So it’s a complex issue. I do support mask wearing in public. It certainly doesn’t do any harm and I think it encourages good habits and makes people think about what they do and why. I suspect if they are effective, at least some of that effectiveness comes from those peripheral effects. Still, every little helps.

Very simplistic statement. What is “in public”? How is touching a mask (and therefore your face) constantly a guaranteed win? Why has the virus not raged incredibly in locations with fewer mask mandates? Would it make more sense to require masks “in private” where people are in closer contact? Requiring them outside “in public” where people are spaced out is symbolic and authoritarian; it makes people like you feel better. Hardly a reason for a policy.

You mean a location like the entire US? It has raged incredibly. Don't fool yourself into thinking anywhere in the US, mask mandate or not, actually has a high rate of mask usage.

The only way to do any sort of comparison would be the US versus another country which actually follows a mask mandate. Even then, the comparisons are hard because those countries likely did lots of things right.

> Requiring them outside “in public”

Yes, masks outside are dumb in many situations. But, this was in direct response to people just moving their large parties outside with no distance. Unfortunately any time a rule is not spelled out in great detail, people look for loopholes as a form of protest. Ironically, this leads to rules spelled out in symbolic and authoritarian ways.

it just reflects how the ruling class view the peasants.

This to me resonates with what happened in France during 2020. Many were complaining about how the government was treating the people "like babies" instead of treating them "like adults". Nothing came up related to the "rich vs poor" strife which, usually, comes up very, very quickly here.

I think this whole crisis shed some light on the communication skills required from the various authorities. I sympathise with people not liking to be treated like kids, I don't either. But then, looking at people's actual behavior [0], it did make me wonder what the actual, correct, communication should have been.

It's clear to me that "the people" is not one homogenous blob made of identical individuals. People will interpret a message differently and will behave differently when faced with the same exact situation. I guess the whole difficulty of this is that the government and various authorities implicated in managing this crisis can't have the message wrapped in different packages, each targeted to a certain group of people.

---

[0] I'm thinking of an episode in early March 2020, right before the lockdown, when the message was "let's all try to take measures to prevent the spread, namely let's stop all bunching up". This was a message from the President, broadcast on public TV, at the time one of the most widely viewed ones. Can't remember the day, but it was during the week. The very next Sunday, so less than one week later, people swarmed the parks in Paris with no attempt whatsoever at distancing.

Was everyone out there? Of course not. Was it even a majority? I don't know, probably not. But those same people would then take public transportation with hundreds of thousands of other people to go to work with other people and so on. All when we were concerned about a virus that was easily spreading through air.

After watching the results in Australia and China, I think they do.

I disagree. The people being called anti-science and liars are not asking the second question at all, but instead wanting to act like there is no virus. Big difference.

Truly asking the second question, which everyone else seems to ask and evaluate constantly, is what gradient of lockdown works for what situation.

>...

>I realize it doesn't sound like it, but I'm trying to excuse the CDC here. I'm not just saying they're corrupt. I'm saying they have to deal with the inevitable amount of corruption which it takes to be part of a democratic government, and they're handling it as well as they can under the circumstances.

>...

>Dr. Fauci (and WebMD) are legibly good (or at least legibly okay). They sit on a giant golden throne, with a giant neon arrow pointing to them saying "TRUST THIS GUY". If a random shmuck who doesn't know anything about anything Googles "who should I trust about COVID?", Google will return Dr. Fauci's name. This is a position of great power; Dr. Fauci is able to make decisions that will affect billions of dollars in wealth, Senate seats, Twitter likes, and other extremely valuable resources. Thousands of people who would prefer that they get the dollars and seats and likes will be gunning for him. In order to stay on that throne, Dr. Fauci will need to get and keep lots of powerful allies (plus be the sort of person who thinks in terms of how to get allies rather than being minimaxed for COVID-prediction).

Quotes from https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-.... I think it's a good read overall, maybe a bit long for some. I share your concerns for apparent bad public policy. Having a government that messes things up and then patronizingly dodges all criticism while lapping up unearned praise (looking at you Cuomo) is frustrating and makes people lose faith in experts and "the system". The general social and media environment we live in today is definitely not helping.

The fact is though, people are willing to accept being lied to by people they otherwise view favourably. For example a lot of the people decrying Fauci as a liar support Trump, who at the beginning of the pandemic was telling a journalist in private how the coronavirus was deadly and more dangerous than the worst flus, but in public at the same time was saying it was a hoax and nothing to worry about, and obstructing efforts to prepare for it.

People will choose the truths they care about. That’s why integrity in public life is so important. I don’t think it can be an absolute in practice, politicians, even scientists are only human. But there must be a cost to knowingly deceiving the public, and there must be contrition, it can never be considered an acceptable practice. It can never be good enough to just point to an ideological opponent and say, well, they do it too. That’s not an argument.

In the current political climate lying and wilful deception have become normalised. That has to stop, as an urgent priority. Democracy relies on the electorate making informed decisions, and that system is compromised if they are being mislead and manipulated.

And a quick google shows this:

https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-doesnt-regret-advising...

I would be ok with Fauci saying masks weren't effective because the best science avialable was incorrect at that time. Science can be flawed, especially early on when facing a new disease. We might not know if the virus is surface spread or airborne. We might believe that it is transmitted through droplets after a cough - something medical staff would experience much more of than people at a grocery store. There are all kinds of reasons they could be wrong. So the CDC, and Fauci, would lose no credibility with me merely by being wrong, in retrospect, if they were presenting the best answers science had that that time.

Now, if the CDC deliberately misled, then it absolutely isn't fine. The CDC has authority because they are scientists. We respect and follow their advice not because we believe they are our noble leaders, or our moral betters, or know best for us, but because we believe that what they say is the truth, grounded in science. If they in fact used this trust to deliberately mislead, it would be devastating to his credibility and the credibility of the CDC for a very, very long time. For our own benefit? Perhaps, but it would still be a deep betrayal of his specific office because of the source of his authority.

The CDC could say, in that case, "we believe that masks are effective, and N95 medical grade masks are best - however, there is a shortage right now. Because cloth masks can provide some protection for essential activities such as grocery shopping, and medical grade masks are essential for medical providers who will work in close proximity with many infected people, we implore the American people to allow all medical grade masks to go to medical providers, and we support regulations that require these masks be reserved for medical providers".

That would be fine. But you can't represent science and truth and then lie about the science. Not if you want to be trusted ever again.

To be clear, these are scenarios. I'm not sure it's entirely established that Fauci clearly knew that masks were effective for day to day non medical use and deliberately told people the opposite in order to keep them from buying masks. I've done some reading, and Fauci stumbles a lot over this - he keeps saying two things at once - that it wasn't clear that a masks were important, and that we badly needed to reserve them for medical personnel. The second statement actually badly undermines the first, IMO, because it would provide a justification for lying (even if this isn't what he did).

Anyway, if you have that WaPo link, please send it. That would change how I see this situation.

Except, apparently you can! Here you are acknowledging the lie, and yet you still trust them.

He said healthy people did not need to wear one.

Masks are still ineffective at stopping the spread. This didn't change. What changed is governments all over the world understood the value of the way to mark the population willing to follow any stupid regulation.

It's not about you. It's about the greater good (even if maybe there was a misstep (I'm not saying there was/wasn't)).

There is no we here. I do not believe in the things you believe in.

from Anthem by Ayn Rand

I agree that figuring out when to reward users is the hard part. My best solution at the moment is to do something like slashdot/HN/reddit/others with upvotes, moderation, and meta-moderation, but I don't think there is any system completely impervious to manipulation.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

-- source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covi...

“We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

Herd immunity is also a moving target based on a lot of factors. Hopefully it doesn't reach measles level requirement.

If you’re massaging your answers to questions based on what people want to hear, you better hope they don’t find out.

It's up to you to decide whether that makes him an asshole or not, but I think the fact that he's discussing it with reporters says a lot about his transparency and honesty all by itself.

If he's willing to lie about that, what else is he lying about?

"In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”"

"In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks."

The problem Dr. Fauci and other scientist have is if they share their opinions and then evidence comes out that makes them change their opinions, they have people who will call them liars and pull quotes out of context. But, this is exactly how science works.

> the average person starts to distrust the "science"

Unfortunately the average person doesn't understand science and that is why they distrust it. I still see people citing papers relating SARS1 is killed by hydroxychlorqine in vitro, ignoring all the papers describing RCTs in vivo dealing with SARS2.

That isn’t to say he should be vigilant when he speaks to be accurate, but sometimes advisement needs to be done before all the data is there.

I’ve had leaders that misrepresented facts in order to obtain compliance, as Fauci has, and leaders that were honest with me. I know which I prefer and I know which is considered ethical.

He’s clearly saying he changed his statement based on the compliance of the population and not medical research. He misrepresented the medical consensus as to what percentage of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity.

So it’s really an educated guess, and he took a lower estimate. People don’t do well with ranged and errors— just look at how stocks move based upon whether they beat or not their analyst estimates in quarterly reports… they almost always are within the range stipulated but people pick the middle value and hold everything to it.

None of this would cause me to characterize him as untrustworthy. We need far more Faucis in this world.

Is it all a plan, another kind of elaborate conspiracy? Nothing so elegant. As Steve Bannon kindly told us, the informational strategy of the Trump era has always been to “flood the zone with shit.” Four years later, we can see what this looks like in practice.

It makes no sense, and that’s just fine by the likes of Bannon, and Kenney as well. Because if you want to keep waging war on the Earth’s life-supporting ecology, a great way to do it is to deliberately pollute its democracy-supporting information ecology. In fact, the pollution is the point.

Source: https://theintercept.com/2020/12/08/great-reset-conspiracy/