Fabricating Fauci

Surprise! You were conned- and so was I, by a con man from New York City. Whatever Trump touches, dies. So in this case it wasn't Donald Trump, or at least not only Donald Trump, who pulled the wool over our eyes.

In the video below, from 60 Minutes Overtime of March 8, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci tells CBS' Jon LaPook

The masks are important for someone who is infected to prevent them from infecting someone else. Now, when you see people and look at the films in China and South Korea, where everybody's wearing a mask. Right now in the United States people should not be walking around with masks.

LaPook responds "You're sure of it, because people are listening really closely to this?" Fauci replies

Right now, people should not be- there's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little better and it might even prevent a droplet but it's not providing the perfect protection people think that it is. And often, there are unintended consequences. People keep fiddling with their mask and touching their face.

If Joe Biden were ever willing to question a god, he would call this "malarkey." (He'd also not be Joe Biden.) The risk of transmission by touching touching a face, we now know, is extremely minimal and the risk from "fiddling with their mask" is infinitesimal.

But the money message is "right now in the United states, people should not be walking around with masks" because "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask."  That could be a simple error, a man with incomplete information pretending he has all the answers.

But it wasn't. We now know it was a lie, thanks to Katherine Ross (alas, not this Katharine Ross) of The National Review, who wrote on June 12

Dr. Fauci joined TheStreet to talk about why masks are important when you leave the house, and to better explain why there was back and forth in the beginning.

"Masks are not 100% protective. However, they certainly are better than not wearing a mask. Both to prevent you, if you happen to be a person who may feel well, but has an asymptomatic infection that you don't even know about, to prevent you from infecting someone else," said Fauci. "But also, it can protect you a certain degree, not a hundred percent, in protecting you from getting infected from someone who, either is breathing, or coughing, or sneezing, or singing or whatever it is in which the droplets or the aerosols go out. So masks work."

So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning?

"Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."

Dr. Fauci knew masks were effective, even crucial, but lied to the American people. He confidently asserted "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask" when he realized there was a very important reason.

Wearing a mask is more effective than social distancing, not touching a face, or resisting "fiddling" with a mask.  Yet many individuals, some of them skeptical of "experts," in Republican-dominated states are avoiding wearing them.  President Trump's lack of leadership- or leadership in discouraging mask use- has persuaded many individuals in Republican states to avoid masks. Some people, however, are skeptical of the expertise, or honesty, of "experts,"  including ones in the federal government. Fauci has given them good reason to be.

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