The director of the CDC during most of the pandemic was Robert Redfield. Dr. Fauci is director of the NIH, so his statements are not relevant to the credibility of the CDC.
In defense of Dr. Fauci's statement, saying "there is no reason right now to wear a mask" is quite different from "masks are ineffective", as it keeps getting paraphrased. The latter is obviously absurd, as there were numerous studies on the effectiveness of masks against various viruses prior to 2020, just not against SARS-CoV-2 specifically, since as far as we know it didn't exist yet.
Zeynep Tufekci published an excellent article about this. Her thesis is that medical dogma insisted COVID (and other infections) spread through droplets and not aerosols. Social distancing is enough to prevent infection from droplets because they don't travel far. That, it turns out, is wrong, and COVID can spread through smaller respiratory particles that can float, making social distancing alone ineffective.
I've read the article, I do just want to clarify the statement "making social distancing alone ineffective."
It's still true that if you are covid suceptible, and if a covid-shedding person is walking around, you should try to be as far as possible from the covid. But, a brief close pass e.g. on the sidewalk, isn't as risky as sharing a 20'x10' office for hours, even if you stay >6ft the entire time.
If the Wired article, which was downvoted to oblivion, is accurate then the WHO and the CDC (who parroted the WHO) bear a great deal of responsibility.
They shutdown scientists who were telling them that Covid was spreading as an aerosol, way back in early 2020.
The WHO now want MORE power, yet they’re not accepting accountability nor cleaning house.
The strange thing is that we have loads of research done over decades about all of this. It appears that the prominent doctors on the news don't know anything about it. Everything pumped out for publicity is about a sixth grade understanding of biology and epidemiology; but we know a lot more, it's just that Fauci doesn't talk about it and neither does the nightly news. If the role of journalists and the government was to inform, we would have well written articles on the loads of studies we have.
Journalists should give advanced information in digestible form about topics you didn't need to know about, but which are currently relevant. Instead, we get sixth grade hand waving in propaganda form.
Things like adaptive immune response, T-cells, immune escape, antibody dependent enhancement, viral loads, and lots of other things could be explained well but simply. It's a tragedy of modernity that we have so much information and so little understanding.
People can spend their entire lives studying one tiny aspect of our immune system; there are so many interacting, irreducibly complex systems that the average layman can be overwhelmed.
But there are simple things that can be explained visually. See, for instance, this video of Japanese scientists illuminating airborne droplets with green lasers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZm6dx9Hss
Now, the contention here isn't that there are important concepts that should be explained to layman; the contention here is that there are important concepts that actual scientists need to explain to the decision-makers at the CDC.
> In defense of Dr. Fauci's statement, saying "there is no reason right now to wear a mask" is quite different from "masks are ineffective"
If masks are effective, that would be a compelling reason for someone to wear a mask. Saying there is no reason to wear a mask, strongly implies that they aren't beneficial to the individual wearing them. Fauci must have known that this is how people would have interpreted his statements. He should have said "there are very compelling reasons not to wear a mask", which is very different from "there is no reason to wear a mask".
I understand that Fauci had good intentions behind his statement. But it's very hard to regain trust after making misleading statements like the above.
It wasn't a "misspeak" it was a lie. He admitted it was a lie, and that he knew it was lie. If he wanted to give the Gov and CDC any credibility then he should have been honest about the need to reserve masks for health care professionals and urged people not to buy them and make home-made one instead. There is no valid excuse "I was lying for the greater good", that is bullshit.
I'm not a Democrat, which shouldn't really matter. I'm just relaying what actual surveys found, they were regularly asking questions about who was a trusted source of information on COVID and reporting on trends. Feel free to Google for them if you can't accept what I said as plausible.
Inefficacy of masks is a central point in anti-maskers message, and sometimes they would cite you the whole passages from official WHO/CDC advisories. And the belated reversal is just an additional point to "scientists don't know shit" attitude.
No, yeah it did tremendous damage. While there'd certainly be anti maskers without anti-mask hysteria by authorities, the scale would not be the same. It's hard to quantify but likely many tens of thousands of excess deaths globally are on WHO lies.
People were having difficulty providing evidence that Fauci admitted to telling a white lie elsewhere in these comments, yet it's widely believed by certain people that he did so.
There's a link to a factcheck in the comments that quotes what he actually said and it's not at all what many people in this thread seem to sincerely, but mistakenly, think he said.
So allow me to doubt that "anti-mask hysteria" was ever coming from the medical and scientific community unless I see exactly what you're talking about and evaluate it with my own eyes.
But I guess if we disagree on the facts, that helps explain why we draw different conclusions.
Do not confuse medical and scientific community with authorities. The ill advisory was coming from WHO and parroted by national authorities (including CDC). All while the efficacy of masks against airborne/pulmonary diseases was pretty much established. WHO is not a scientific body conducting independent research but a bureaucratic organization with heavy dose of politics.
However back in spring 2020 when the official position amounted to "a mask is a facehugger", arguing for using masks (including by medical professionals) was effectively impossible.
“There’s no evidence that wearing masks on healthy people will protect them,” Perencevich said, the publication reported. “They wear them incorrectly, and they can increase the risk of infection because they’re touching their face more often.”
I think we watched different versions of the Alien(s) franchise. Did they retcon that in the prequels?
Don't let that facehugger insert a parasite embryo down your throat! Why not? Well overall it would be more beneficial to society if frontline medical staff were wearing that facehugger while treating patients with confirmed or suspected cases of the virus. Oh okay, that seems sensible.
I honestly don't understand which bit of this quote, from your own source you don't understand:
“Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!” he wrote. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
Is he saying that N95 masks don't work at all? That they only magically work for healthcare professionals?
Or is he very, very, clearly, even within the limited confines of a tweet, explaining that N95 masks are better allocated to frontline medical staff than being randomly worn by low risk people in low risk locations doing low risk tasks? That using those resources more effectively will save more lives and that people in those lowee risk situations can easily get protection by keeping a safe distance and following other sensible precautions that they list.
I can see how someone could intentionally misrepresent what he says, but I don't see an honest way to make that mistake.
I don't think I ever challenged the plausible intent of the lie (to avoid shortages). That does not stop a lie being a lie, with long term, serious harm.
The masks ARE effective in prevention COVID (both ways), and there is no demonstrated risk in wearing masks wrong. They lied on both accounts providing fuel to anti-masker movement. And yes the logical inconsistency of insisting masks are ineffective yet are necessary to frontline workers were pointed out year ago - you're not breaking any fresh ground here.
In defense of Dr. Fauci's statement, saying "there is no reason right now to wear a mask" is quite different from "masks are ineffective", as it keeps getting paraphrased. The latter is obviously absurd, as there were numerous studies on the effectiveness of masks against various viruses prior to 2020, just not against SARS-CoV-2 specifically, since as far as we know it didn't exist yet.