We were already lied to at least about masks and required threshold for herd immunity. I feel like our public health officials have done serious damage to their credibility. Perhaps irreversibly so as far as many are concerned.
A leader who can say they screwed up and then try and fix it is better than one who won't admit they are wrong and keeps to the wrong position just to save face. Bolsanaro in Brazil comes to mind.
It shouldn't be that hard to not say things you can't support. Fauci should have told the truth, which is that however effective masks are they were in short supply and would do more good for doctors/etc.
At some point, being more concerned with controlling people than educating them is maliciousness. He wanted masks for doctors but was willing to give bad advice to citizens to make it happen.
We deserve honest scientists, not politicians, making policy.
Later on aerosole scientists made the correct analysis that the more important path was to prevent the small droplets from infected people spreading over shirt distances and then any old mask is better than none. Once this was realised the messaging changed.
Was it an error not to know this up front? Yes! Was it malicious? Unlikely. The malicious activity came from the trump administration who till the end kept ridiculing the scientists and telling its supporters all is fine just to win votes. Fauci and the CDC and the scientists are not the fall guy here.
I wasn't when I criticized it the day I heard it. It was obviously not right.
> Later on aerosole scientists made the correct analysis that the more important path was to prevent the small droplets from infected people spreading over shirt distances
(I quoted this just because I laughed at 'shirt distances' in this context.)
> Was it malicious? Unlikely.
Was using his authority to say something absolutely unproven and implausible malicious? Or just extremely obviously going to have negative consequences which he ignored?
> the trump administration [...] Fauci and the CDC and the scientists are not the fall guy here.
Fauci and the WHO both go out of their way to say things that they can't know. Sure, Trump is also awful, but that's not relevant to our "scientists" overstepping. At this point Fauci is a politician. Better than some, but still.
I also was arguing with people on Facebook weeks before the CDC and who changed their position and I predicted masks would become mandatory. But that was my personal opinion and not proof that Fauci acted in bad faith. You and are I anecdotal data points with no responsibility to anybody . Nobody got it "right" but the scientists were at least putting the effort in the right direction instead of right wing politicians.
Typing on a mobile without my glasses so autocorrect will have its day!
To be fair, malicious was someone else's word. It's close enough I ran with it, but perfidy and incompetence might be better. We're trusting the guy to be a chief scientist and he's making political statements.
> You can't pick and choose only part of the message and
I'm not. I'm picking on the whole message as being something he could not have known and thus was damaging to claim.
> But that was my personal opinion and not proof that Fauci acted in bad faith.
His job is to not say unsupportable things so that we can base policy off of his words. What is it other than bad faith to conflate your politics and your job?
> You and are I anecdotal data points with no responsibility to anybody
Speak for yourself. I've got family.
> Nobody got it "right" but the scientists were at least putting the effort in the right direction instead of right wing politicians.
Nobody made him fight the lab leak hypothesis, etc. He's borrowing partisan fights. The WHO hasn't officially investigated so it can't know, and if it doesn't know, he doesn't know.
Also, just fyi, there's no such thing as right wing anymore. The term means royalist. Left means communist, which there sadly is no lack of. Perhaps breaking free of these antiquated labels will give some clarity.