Originally posted by barondla
They shouldn't have lied to discourage people buying masks. Follow the science doesn't work, when science is being twisted. Dr.Fauci has already admitted doing it. Why would anyone believe him in the future? No matter how good the reason, it has injured science. People trust science is trying to report what it knows and believes accurately. That trust has been broken.
Thanks,
barondla
I think Dr. Fauci did the best he could. Reading his personal e mails to individuals, he was trying to provide reassurance in a time when people were scared to death.
The whole mask thing was difficult for a number of reasons.
1. There was a real shortage of masks. Health care workers were wearing masks for multiple shifts in a row. There weren't N-95s to be had in many places for love or money. It was felt that providers and nurses were more important to protect than individuals in communities -- particularly if COVID wasn't really prevalent around the country.
2. It was thought that the main way that COVID was transmitted was via fomites. People were wiping down their groceries. Scientists went onto cruise ships and found they could find traces of COVID several days after cabins were unoccupied. It turns out that this wasn't the primary way that COVID was spread and the main way was via aerosols and water droplets. Wiping down counters and door knobs may be a clean thing to do, but it doesn't make a difference with regard to COVID spread.
3. It was thought that healthy people couldn't transmit COVID. If this is true, then there was no point for someone without a cough or nasal congestion to wear a mask. It turns out that pre-symptomatic and low symptom people are the main way that COVID is spread. People usually do stay home when they feel ill. If they have a little scratchy throat and think they just have allergies, they go out and can spread COVID. Or they have no symptoms, but will develop them in a couple of days.
I think the important thing is to recognize when science changes. If you have cancer and your oncologist starts you on a chemotherapy regimen, would you be upset if two months in he told you that a study had just showed that a different protocol would give you a 99 percent chance of beating your cancer? I would think you would just be pleased and be willing to switch based on the new data, but maybe you should immediately fire your cancer doctor as being a liar and untrustworthy.
I think Dr. Fauci should have said a little less and recognized where we didn't know certain things, but I think people were going to be angry with him regardless of what he said and they would pick it apart after the fact.