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.