he didn't say masks were effective but we should save them for the healthcare community, now did he?
From the March 2020 interview on 60 minutes that right wing media keeps taking out of context:
Fauci: …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 bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.
LaPook: And can you get some schmutz, sort of staying inside there?
Fauci: Of course, of course. But, when you think masks, you should think of health care providers needing them and people who are ill. The people who, when you look at the films of foreign countries and you see 85% of the people wearing masks — that’s fine, that’s fine. I’m not against it. If you want to do it, that’s fine.
LaPook: But it can lead to a shortage of masks?
Fauci: Exactly, that’s the point. It could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it.
And what is wrong with what I said? He's downplaying the effectiveness of masks here. He isn't saying they are effective.
He was right when he said this too. Masks will stop droplets from being propelled, but we don't have any idea how the virus spread, apart from it's an upper respiratory virus that is airborne. We don't know the extent of asymptomatic spread or pre-syptomatic spread, how long viral particles stay in the air, whether they are effectively caught in the masks, or whether viral particles just go around the mask due to a poor sealing on the face.
NONE of this was figured out between March 2020 and April 2020 when the guidelines switched and it still isn't even hashed out a year later. This isn't a right wing thing, show me the data. Show me the evidence and the research that masks actually did anything.
The only research I found were laboratory simulated dummies exerting aerosol particles into a mask versus aerosol particles without a mask, which is something I or anyone else disputes. In some studies, they used real people, an example here -
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7What we dispute about masks is whether viral spread occurs because people enter a store, sneeze on everyone, and leaves -- and that a mask would somehow solve the issue, or whether the virus spreads through more complicated mechanisms that aren't well understood. And this isn't even taking into account the issue of people reusing masks, touching the mask which presumably has viral particles on it, then touching other people/surfaces, cheap masks that don't create proper seals with the face, ect.
Sure, in a laboratory setting, you can create a circumstance where droplets are captured in a mask, the real world isn't so neat and tidy.
You might ask why this is a bad thing, who cares if people wears masks? Well, Dr. Fauci explained it. It gives people a false sense of confidence. And well, it's also anti science from the party of everything scientific.