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Comment by caseysoftware | Hacker News Reader

No one is quite sure but we're a LONG way from it.. and that's without addressing the fear/trauma that's been inflicted on otherwise healthy+exceptionally low risk people.

From a month ago:

Dr. Anthony Fauci now says as much as 90 percent of the population may need to get vaccinated or infected to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 — admitting in a new interview that he has been intentionally raising the bar based, in part, on what he thinks the country is ready to hear.

“We really don’t know what the real number is,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert told the New York Times.

“I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

Ref: https://nypost.com/2020/12/24/fauci-covid-herd-immunity-requ...

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> on what he thinks the country is ready to hear

He does have a track record of being dishonest about things. Part of the reason he drug his feet on masks was he was worried about shortages. It makes sense, but I really don't like the "I know what's best for you" paternalism.

Fauci was never dishonest. That was Trump trying to shift the blame to him. Watch the original clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI&feature=youtu.be He literally said that the reason he is advising against masks was because he was worried about shortages.

> Fauci was never dishonest

TheStreet asked him "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.

https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...

He didn't say "because we didn't know any better," he said (paraphrased) so the general public doesn't go out and buy them, causing a shortage. I find that dishonest.

There's 'dishonest' and there's 'diplomatic'.

Another example, when Trump (like him or not) pretended to be best pals with Kim Jon Un, he was being diplomatic. CNN accused him of being dishonest and called for him to announce publicly to his country that "actually I'm lying".

Was he 'lying'? Yes. Should he have told the truth to Kim Jon Un's face for the sake of 'honesty' and destroy all the diplomatic progress he had made at a time when KJU was flaunting his nukes? Maybe. Probably not.

Back to Fauci. Was he 'lying'? Yes. If he had told people 'masks work and will save your lives but health professional lives are more important' would that have had the same effect? Maybe. Probably not.

Also, since we love our fallacies in this place. Accusing someone of being dishonest for no good reason is effectively a variant of the outcome fallacy (judging the quality of an argument/action based on knowing the eventual outcome, rather than judging whether it was a reasonable course of action given what was known at the time). We simply do not know had Fauci been 'honest' whether the death toll would be halved or doubled right now. We can only speculate.

> he said (paraphrased) so the general public doesn't go out and buy them, causing a shortage

How is that dishonest? He was completely transparent about this motivation from the start, as shown from my clip from the earlier interview.

The message was definitely lost along the way when US surgeon general tweeted that masks wasn't effective against covid.

At best, they are grossly incompetent at communicating with the public.

https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12447444277357813...

https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12440202923658158...

Your first link says not to unless you're sick, implying that they thought they were useful for people with the virus. The second link literally says that having supplies for healthcare workers was the main impetus for saying this.

This has stood up remarkably well, a year on we know that masks are mostly effective to prevent people spreading the virus and not to prevent contracting it and we know much more about how readily it spreads asymptomatically.

Fauci was pretty explicit about it in the linked interview:

> “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.”

I think it’s fair to characterize this as dishonesty, and to be less charitable about whether his past communications were in retrospect honest.

Yeah he's been all over the place since day one. I don't really listen to the guy anymore.

All over the place, changing his position as he learns more, tomayto, tomato right?

Based "on what he thinks the country is ready to hear" to use his own words.

Learn about what? Masks are effective against flu? We know that for a century.

This isn't the flu and they didn't know much about it at all initially

That's how you know he's a physician and not a politician. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/12/fauci-says-us-has-independen...

I dunno, politicians seem pretty good at lying to people.

In seriousness, I believe him when he said he's not a politician. What he doesn't get is that that's half his job.

So how do you tell if its just bad politics and lying -versus- accurately giving updated research data, and making recommendations upon that?

It's damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

I heard the vaccine only lasts 5-6 months.

People are so impatient nowadays.

I can't blame them. Rent is due on the first of the month even during a pandemic.

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