I have seen the 60 Minutes interview (March 2020: Dr. Anthony Fauci talks with Dr Jon LaPook about Covid-19) used as proof positive for this. The dialogue goes (transcribed by me. I is the interviewer and F is for Fauci):
F: The masks are important for someone infected from preventing infecting ...
Reading it in context, especially the first line "The masks are important for someone infected from preventing infecting someone else," it sounds more like he is saying that masks are not protection, but they help prevent infecting others, and he thought protecting yourself wasn't a priority at that point in the pandemic. Even when trying, I can't read this as "Masks don't work at all," which would be required for this to be a "yes" answer to the statement in question. Even out of context, there is a difference between "don't work at all" and "not perfect protection".
@Morfildur But then when asked to clarify he says "Right now there is no reason to be walking around with a mask.". So he cleared flip-flopped on that.
@JeromeViveiros Mar 9, 2020. The source is from 60 minutes own youtube channel. From the video description quote= Mar 9, 2020 • In March, Fauci told 60 Minutes that masks should largely be reserved for healthcare providers. ....
@dan-klasson He says masks aren't perfect protection. He doesn't say masks are useless to the general public in a pandemic. He also talks about healthcare providers "needing", there's a question about shortage, and again an answer about "need". To me this seems the argument is less on effectiveness than prioritisation, and we know there was limited quantities. Compare "you shouldn't walk around with a mask because they don't do anything" with "you shouldn't walk around with a mask because they can be better used elsewhere right now".
Might help to add it was a March 2020 interview (which was just as COVID was starting and we were wiping everything down since we didn't know how it spread).
When he said this, he still made exceptions for those showing symptoms. At the time, it was not known that asymptomatic individuals could be infectious.
This was in line with CDC guidance up to that point, which was that recommending mask use to the general public (rather than medical workers and high-risk individuals) was a waste of good masks due to the low effectiveness of masks when worn by untrained personnel, and the risk of depleting the supply of masks for people who really needed them. But that was before we turned 97% of the world economy to mask production.
@AmiralPatate What he claimed was that there weren't enough masks to go around back then. But given that it's OK to walk around with cloth masks, then why not just recommend wearing things like scarfs and bandanas? The answer is that he flipped-flopped.
@dan Heck no. The answer is that the evidential situation changed. Back then, there was no good evidence that cloth masks would be at all effective, and some reason to assume that they wouldn’t. In the meantime, studies have repeatedly shown that cloth masks are effective (though potentially less so than medical masks, and substantially less than N95 masks). — Changing your stance in response to evidence isn't “flip-flopping”. It's science.
@KonradRudolph can you link to those studies that conclusively show cloth or surgical masks (or even N95 masks) stopping the spread particulate from an aerosolized virus? At least for the first year or so it was taken on faith that masks work and I don't believe there has been any published proof. Certainly no RCTs that I'm aware of. In fact I'm aware of a number of studies that show that cloth and surgical masks provide a wholly negligible benefit (on the order 2% or less risk reduction).
@user2647513 I would be interested in seeing your studies because a quick browse on google scholar turns up studies that were retracted, withdrawn, or on not super trustworthy sources.
@user2647513 If you demand RCTs then you apply unreasonable standards of evidence: performing a large RCT on something like this would — at the moment — be pretty unethical, and generally wouldn’t get IRB approval for that reason (there are smaller RCTs but by their nature they’re inconclusive). The closest to an RCT you’re likely to find is this field study. Formal and informal lab studies on the filtration efficiency of cloth masks abound and hopefully shouldn’t be controversial.
@user2647513 I’d like to see where you got that 2% number from, because that’s very different from numbers I’ve seen. That being said, the virus variant plays a role, and cloth masks appear much less effective against Omicron, in particular. Lastly, since you mention “aerosolised”, just a note that a cloth mask of course doesn’t have to block an aerosol to still be effective: infection is a stochastic game, and even just blocking droplets hugely decreases the concentration of virus particles in a given volume of air, which in turn lowers risk of infection.
@dan-klasson yes, your haste to call scientific discovery "flip-flopping", suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of the scientific method. Or really any sort of external reality: it should be obvious by now that COVID doesn't follow our plan. Imagine someone saying "Eisenhower said we'd be back in Paris by late '43! Now it'll be summer '44, why does Ike keep moving the goalposts?" um, coz that other army and stuff...
@Harper-ReinstateMonica No it doesn't. I know perfectly well that there's nothing wrong with changing your mind. Problem with Fauci is that he claims he hasn't changed his mind. He is clearly lying and that's not the only thing he has been caught lying about.
@dan-klasson Where has he said he hasn't changed his mind? If it was in response to a question, are you sure the question was based on correct premises? If you've changed your favorite color from blue to red, and someone asks you why you changed your favorite color from orange to black, and they say "I haven't changed my mind from orange to black", you can't use that as evidence that they are lying about their change from blue to red.
@BryanKrause On why he didn't recommend masks from the beginning of the pandemic he said “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,”thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/…
I also do not read this as masks-are-ineffective, he directly says that masks can block droplets. He just says that masks aren't perfect and that they're more needed for hospitals, etc. If I tell you that seat belts in cars don't provide perfect protection against injury during a car crash, you wouldn't think that seat belts are ineffective, because it's obvious that even the most effective seat belt still has limitations.
@user3067860 What he is saying is that the reason he told the public that people should not wear masks, was not because they were inefficient, but because health workers needed them. But if that's the case, then why not recommend people to use scarfs and bandanas as I pointed out earlier. He didn't do that. He changed his mind and he's refusing to admit it. Admitting you're wrong is not a hard thing to do. It truly speaks volumes of what kind of guy he is.
@BryanKrause It's in the context. It's from an interview he gave where they asked him about it. Look it up. Text on comments is limited.
Saying something is "not perfect protection" cannot be reasonably interpreted as "masks don't work at all," which was the claim. @user1999728, why did you accept an Answer that contradicts itself?
@dan-klasson I read the whole thing; you're going to have to connect some dots. I see where he explains the reasoning for the guidance, which is consistent with the guidance given, and where he explains the change in the guidance, which is consistent with acquiring new data and changing guidance accordingly. No denials of having changed, no inconsistency with the best information at the time, no lying.
The source and transcription in this answer is useful. The interpretation in it... isn't really. Nowhere in his statement does he say anything to the effect of "face masks don't work against Covid-19." He says that they don't provide perfect protection, that they should be used by people who are ill and that they are needed by healthcare workers. There's no reasonable way to interpret that as "masks don't work" whether the audience be a 'lay' person or a scientist. Also, expecting a scientist (or engineer, doctor, etc.) to speak about a technical subject in lay speech is a fool's errand.
@BryanKrause Yeah, that's super consistent. First, masks don't do much, don't bother using them. Then, wear masks you irresponsible plebs. I love how you guys are jumping through hoops to defend this guy. In Sweden we have an epidemiologist with a slightly different take.
@dan-klasson you seem really intent on actively and intentionally misstating what the actual, quoted text says for some reason. Why? No part of any quote in this response, or that you've otherwise provided in the comments could rationally be read to claim "masks don't do much, don't bother using them". In fact, the quotes indicate that, while imperfect, masks are effective, and (as it was understood at the time, based on available data) when and where people should wear them.
The data that Fauci was originally going on was generic, non-covid-specific information about how masks work as a public health measure. The answer from known data at the time was that masks weren't that effective as a public health measure, because real-world studies of mask wearing didn't have much impact on actual disease transmission
That's different from measuring whether mask material blocks droplets or aerosols or virus particles or anything like that; its from measuring whether telling some people "hey, wear masks" makes them less likely to get sick. It didn't seem like that instruction was very helpful, so the guidance to the public was to not recommend masks
It's not entirely clear why masks weren't effective in a public health sense, but Fauci talked about some possible reasons, including wearing masks improperly (have you thought about all the nose-out mask wearers?) and that if people tend to touch their masks and also surfaces, they might be transferring virus to and from surfaces, circumventing the intended purpose of the mask
That's all very different from PPE use in a healthcare environment, where staff are trained and where masks are used and disposed: you don your gear, enter a high-risk environment, dispose of the gear as you leave. So the goal was to preserve masks for the situation where they were likely to be most effective: for health care workers, while not promoting their use where they were likely to not be effective (use by the general public)
That guidance then shifted towards using alternatives like cloth masks (even when it wasn't clear how effective they were, if they were better than nothing and don't interfere with the supply for healthcare, there is no harm done)
Later evidence seemed to contradict what was previously thought about public health use of masks, and it seemed like people were actually reducing their risks by wearing masks as a general precaution, so that guidance was changed, too
No lies, no misleading, no flip-flopping, just logical guidance based on knowledge at the time, which shifted as knowledge and circumstances shifted, as it should
@dan-klasson because in March 2020 there was no (or not enough) evidence that cloth masks helped? I don't understand where your confusion is.
And I'm not seeing where he flip flopped?
But here you've toally misconstrued what he's said. > First, masks don't do much, don't bother using them No, he said medical grade masks are better used being reserved for medical professionals (for a variety of reasons). > Then, wear masks you irresponsible plebs When there a) were enough masks to go around and b) more evidence that cloth masks helped, he started recommending masks. I don't see any contradiction here. You seem to be upset that as the situation (shortages and evidence) changed over time, so did recommendations. You should be *happy* that he was willing to change advice giv…
It's like complaining that the reaction to the initial virus and Omicron were different: but of course that's the case. We've got different immunities, different transmissions, different severities, different treatments, different vaccines.
Discussion on answer by pinegulf: Did…
Discussion on answer by pinegulf: Did…