I not sure it can be considered a lie though. Wrong, but at the time the precedent was pandemic flus and SARS-1, and there isn't much presymptomatic transmission of either. Quarantining once you have symptoms will do the job. SARS-2 is freakish in just how much it replicates in the nose for a couple days before symptoms. It was another 3 weeks before enough data coming out of China established there was likely an appreciable degree of presymptomatic transmission occuring and the CDC guideline was changed.
That said, he definitely should have expressed the reason he was making a stand either way, i.e. that healthcare workers needed the supplies more than folks in the street.
A better example of a lie was when he said he was titering up the number for what is required for herd immunity based on what he thinks will be publicly palatable, while that's dodgy imo it is kinda small potatoes.
Fauci later said that the reason they advised against masks was because of fears of a PPE shortage. So either Fauci admitted that his earlier position was a deception, or his later claim was itself deceptive.
That has always been obvious horseshit to anyone who knows anything about biology. His later statement was that the "real reason" they advised people not to wear masks was not actually the stated reason, but a completely different reason. That's literally a deception, and it from Fauci's own words, it appears to have been an intentional deception.
Now you might be ok with public health officials deceiving the public about public health, but I am not. I think it's doubly important that such an official be above reproach in the midst of a pandemic.
Again, he didn't comment on the factual basis of the original mask guidance, only the reason why he made a proclamation one way or another. You are reading between the lines a bit too hard here I reckon.
> That has always been obvious horseshit to anyone who knows anything about biology.
With SARS-2 and hindsight, sure. But had it been like all previous pandemic respiratory viruses including the one most closely related to this virus, where the vast majority of transmission occurs only after a carrier is symptomatic, no, masks wouldn't do much for people in the street as long as anyone with symptoms stayed home.
I think the guidance was muddled and he could have explained the rationale re: healthcare workers. But Fauci didn't later admit deception and what he said at the time wasn't out of line with a reasonable interpretation of available evidence.
And those reasons contradict the earlier reasons he gave. How is this not a clear deception? Perhaps we should discuss the actual video evidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLXttHlUgK8
Furthermore, if the factual basis of the original recommendations were not false, why were masks mandated soon after shortages were no longer a concern? (and continue to be)
> But had it been like all previous pandemic respiratory viruses including the one most closely related to this virus, where the vast majority of transmission occurs only after a carrier is symptomatic
That's irrelevant to this topic. You don't know who else around you in public might be symptomatic, that's the whole point of wearing masks.
> But Fauci didn't later admit deception and what he said at the time wasn't out of line with a reasonable interpretation of available evidence.
Yes, he literally did. He said people should not be walking around wearing masks. He justified this recommendation by saying that it's because masks are not providing the protection people think they do, and that they might only stop a droplet or two (all clear nonsense). He even said that wearing a mask might be more dangerous than not wearing one. These are all claims he made in that interview.
When asked later why his advice around masks changed, he didn't say the understanding of the facts changed, he said that those original recommendations were made for reasons completely unrelated to effectiveness (fears of PPE shortages).
You can try to spin this however you want to suit your narrative, or try to be as charitable as you want to Fauci, but this was clearly deceptive messaging, and almost certainly intentionally deceptive. At the very least, this would make Fauci among the worst science communicators I've ever seen, at worst he violated the public trust, and is that really who you want communicating to the public in the midst of a public health emergency?
> why were masks mandated soon after shortages were no longer a concern? (and continue to be)
...because that is when the scientific evidence changed. Preprints from China were streaming in in March 2020 that were making a significant degree of presymptomatic transmission look increasingly likely.
Why would he even bring up PPE shortages in response to a question about changing mask recommendations? You've invented a charitable narrative in an attempt to explain the changing recommendations, but this narrative doesn't actually explain the available evidence.
Like I've been saying all along, he either very clearly lied, or he's literally the worst science communicator I've ever seen.
Either way he should not be the face of public health.
GP gave an actual quote, can you provide one for this as well?
Maybe you think Fauci changed his mind based on new evidence on mask effectiveness, but he literally says they advised against masks due to a fear of PPE shortages, and not due to changing evidence. So either way he deceived: either he deceived about mask effectiveness thus spreading health misinformation, or he deceived about why he advised against wearing masks thus undermining public trust in his advice.
Fauci admits to moving the goalposts on vaccination rates and explains it's because of his "gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks":
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covi...
I think public health officials like Fauci really shot themselves in the foot by undermining their credibility so early on. Public health officials in a public health crisis should be beyond reproach, but that's not how they've been acting, and continued partisan support of these figures only further deteriorates trust in scientific institutions and journalism.
The US pandemic response hasn’t been a Trump or Biden problem, it’s been a Fauci problem.
But what really gets my goat, much more than that white lie, is when grown adults feign ignorance and pretend they never heard the lie, that the lie was never told. Two years ago isn't that long ago, we all remember it. I think the feigned ignorance is perhaps another white lie motivated by good intentions; maybe some think they can fight covid by defending the reputations of public health officials who were only telling a well intentioned lie in the first place. But despite those good intentions, I think this denial of history is tantamount to gaslighting.
In a conversation about accuracy of statements and not making misstatements just to improve rhetoric, this seems like a weird choice. "No one actually said this, but it captures the zeitgeist (just trust me)".
> “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” the surgeon general, Jerome M. Adams, said in a tweet on Saturday morning. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-n95-fa...
If your intent here is to cast aspersions on claims that comments like this were made, then you are gaslighting. Anybody without serious brain damage remembers the medical technocrats and their media lackeys were signaling against masks early in the pandemic. The above article contains quotes from numerous officials, each worded in different ways but getting at the same message that I wrote above, that masks don't work for proles but do for doctors. Trying to make people question their memory of this is gaslighting.
There’s a similar meme going around the US, but I’ve yet to find any (except one, noted below) health expert who actually said “masks don’t work” rather than “we don’t know that masks work.”
The one exception I’ve been able to find was the US Surgeon General Jerome Adams.
This seems like a clear example of health authorities sharing a nuanced true-at-the-time message that got stripped of that nuance and rounded out to the nearest (false) simplified interpretation.
From the chief public health officer of Canada who is also a WHO advisor. She's also said other very questionable things (which are all Googleable and which pretty much every Canadian can tell you as it's been a bit of an ongoing scandal, among others...).
Not sure if that’s the same interview you linked though^
“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.”
“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.”
-- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covi...
Of course, the problem with people who don't believe in vaccination is not only due to their lack of statistical understanding, but it's massively enforced by politicians and "journalist" who spread those lies.
A reasonable scenario that doesn't get bought up enough is that average people have a radically different risk tolerance than professionals working in the healthcare industry. 1 in 10,000 incidents mean very little to a person on the street but translate into actual work for a healthcare worker.
Now that it's becoming vaccinate every six months, the outlook of the cumulative probability of side effects doesn't look that good anymore.
And, going trough an inflammatory process every six months doesn't seem good on its own, even if the vaccine wouldn't have side effect.
It's actually quite common that vaccinations need to be done multiple times (up to 5 times for DPT) and to have boosters for these when traveling to certain countries.
Are you claiming this as a universal truth? Or your specific experience?
My experience and that of two of my three adult children is that it was like a slight bruise at the injection site for about 24 hours. The other child felt slightly under the weather for a couple of days, similar severity to having a cold. We all had Pfizer.
My impression is that my experience is the more common one, but it is not the one that grabs anyone's attention.
The more serious side effects seem to be vanishingly rare.
so, an inflammatory response.
Covid infection is “potentially” much worse, that’s true, but so is a drive to a vaccination site — the child might die or get seriously injured in a traffic accident. What matters is not the “potential” but rather the actual likelihood, the expected value. Has Covid been dangerous to children? The answer is, rather overwhelmingly, no.
Both believers and non-believers tend to be immune - to any findings that run counter to their belief systems. Instead of objectively weighing up pros and cons they get rather heated and adopt binary thinking along pro- and anti-vaccination lines with some indulging in the same trap themselves.
> I believe public trust in leaders and institutions is at an incredible low, and I’m not sure how it can be repaired.
I’m not sure you can conclude that the ability or willingness of people to trust anyone is the thing that has weakened when so many people who boastfully distrust traditional mainstream experts also do trust some extremely specific set of claims from some random YouTuber or talk show.
As it became obvious some officials were willing to lie, this opened the door to many people having no idea who to trust.
I believe public trust in leaders and institutions is at an incredible low, and I’m not sure how it can be repaired.
Regardless of whether you think people are capable of nuance, most people have people in their circle who they trust and do have that capacity. Meanwhile, keeping secrets on the internet is very hard.
I think a much better strategy is to explain honestly and with nuance, and hope that this will maintain your credibility in the face of an army of internet researchers who will probably do more to shape average people’s conception than you can ever hope to do directly.
I would say, please don’t lie.