I did a search on youtube to find these sources ("fauci 60 minutes americans dont need to wear masks") I don't vouch for the channels, these are just the first place I found the relevant clips.
original statement (pretty hard to find):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ5oCxP6TUc
his explanation of that statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2MmX2U2V3c
Here's a timeline summary:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/10/20/is-trum...
This was said by all health officials around January-March 2020. After the stock issue got solved masks suddenly magically became effective for everyone around the summer time. As a "regular person" who took both vaccine shots and is casually observing these developments without reading news or whatever, that single event showed me that governments don't give a shit about telling us the truth in a crisis.
Technically, it was roughly the end of March and April, when evidence of asymptomatic and aerosol transmission began to appear.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/washington-post-live/fa...
Do you have any evidence that this was the reason for the claims?
> How about the initial censorship of the outbreak on social media and news media, on the grounds that the "fear-mongering" about an outbreak in China was racist?
What censorship? I heard about it quite early.
> How about the labelling by the news media of the initial travel bans as racist?
Did the news media label it, or were they reporting on people who were labeling it?
> How about health officials refusing to test anyone who hadn't personally travelled to China for months after the virus had been observed in the US.
AFAIK, there were lack of resources to test. Once the resources became available, testing was widespread.