You're being disingenuous. Newton's model still "works" (at low speeds and when we don't need high precision), so he didn't lie. He also believed what he was saying.

Fauci, on the other hand, does not believe himself. He says things as we are "ready to hear" them.

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

That's lying. If he got updated information and told us so, that's not lying. But he didn't; he just decided to say something different because it was now politically expedient.

Fauci is a political operative, not a scientist.

Paywalled. Herd immunity is not one strict number. It depends on the transmissibility of the virus. Alpha was more. Delta is much more. Now A.Y variant is slightly more than Delta. All these affect the herd immunity number. But you can't lay out these sort of qualifiers when you are communicating to public. Seems like by using words like "political operative" and all you really show your ignorance.

I have JavaScript disabled, so it appears for me.

The relevant quote is:

> 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.

(Emphasis added.)

In other words, he only tells us what is politically expedient. That is, by definition, what a political operative does.

I would suggest you not assume I'm ignorant before reading articles I link to.

You’re saying Fauci isn’t a scientist? Ridiculous.