I looked at your posts on this thread since joining ASR in late April. Your beef with Fauci re: masks is the common one found on highly 'political' outlets e.g., National Review: namely, that Fauci disrecommended mask wearing by the public early in the Covid pandemic, for *political* reasons. Where 'political' is meant as 'nefariously dishonest'. As exhibit A they point to the fact that Fauci , while certainly not declaring masks useless, said on March 8 that there was 'no reason' for the average person to be wearing one. Also that they would provide imperfect protection, especially if misused (which is of course true). It is clear in context, that his overwhelming concern at that time of limited PPE availability and many unknowns about the virus (including its airborne characteristics), was that front liners/trained professionals closely and the highly symptomatic population they are exposed to, would form a disastrous nexus of infection, without masks to prevent it. The disaster would be decimation of the responder community (healthcare workers primarily) in places where the infrastructure was under massive stress. This in turn would lead to and overwhelmed system and more deaths from inadequate healthcare response. (Secondarily, infected responders could become major spreaders themselves in the community at large as well as within hospitals). He was strongly and consistently stressing social distancing then, and afterwards, as the key PP measure for the average person -- a measure
obviously not available to front line responders and their patients.
These circumstances circa March-April have to be kept in mind when we visit your other point, which seems to be that Fauci, and the CDC* should have known before early April (perhaps as early as March 8?) that presymptomatic/asymptomatic (P/A) carriers are infective , and thus it would benefit the public by being masked. The CDS's own literature review (which you linked to, only recently published) was undertaken in early April, thus including the surge of papers produced in March. It found about a dozen (not 'dozens') of papers, typically case studies, that were, if not dispositive, at least suggestive of transmission from P/A people. But certainly there was no consensus until then about how much of a threat they constituted -- *how* infective they were, it was an evolving story; and even today the issue is not settled, particularly for truly asymptomatic individuals. Also, a study since March 8 quantified how much simply speaking could release virus, another evolving story. So by
April 3 Fauci acknowledging new data , is talking about when and why masks could, in fact, be recommended for the general public. (While still stressing the primary importance of distance).
To you and 'certain' groups who choose to see this as 'political' rather than sensible given the circumstances , to the point of advocating *dismissing* his advice, I'd ask: what political constituency was he serving?
*which, unlike Fauci/NIAID, is responsible for developing guidelines, though as we have seen, these can be and have been suppressed/altered for what seem to be quite 'political' reasons by Executive branch actors
