Fauci blurred the line between reporting facts and making public health recommendations. As soon as he (and other public health people) were saying not to bother wearing any kind of mask against an airborne virus, I realized this advice was not necessarily in my best interest. It did not square with common sense, and people in countries in Asia wear masks often. Are they all just so dumb that they don’t know masks won’t protect against an airborne virus?

I do not buy this excuse that they were worried about medical masks being bought up. They could have recommended that people use cloth, which is what people did anyway. I don’t like being manipulated. How many people died because they caught COVID because they or an infected person they encountered were not masked?

Not cool, Fauci and CDC.

Yeah he lied but most of us knew it at the time. At least I thought so.


I think it was a bad call, though I understand it. Covid has resulted in a net loss of trust in the public health profession and quite a bit of it is deserved. Hard to calculate the effects of that, but they're significant.

I remember last year being on a foundation call with a bunch of people including a research physician who is also a consultant to the NIH.

Someone brought up the official guidance that masks aren't effective and she said, bluntly: "They're lying. Wear your mask."

Yeah. And it continues to this day.

The current advice is to wear a mask even after being fully vaccinated. This is based on some vague idea that you could transmit the disease to others.

I'm not seeing a lot of science behind that recommendation. If someone is not fully vaccinated, *they* should be wearing a mask for their own protection. There is no consensus that a vaccinated person can transmit the disease at all or at levels sufficient to infect anyone.

What's really going on is that if the vaccinated walk around unmasked, then the unvaccinated will also. There are a lot of unvaccinated, so it makes good public health sense to protect those people and avoid another wave.

Mmmm, I'm not especially motivated by that. I got vaccinated so I could resume my normal life, so I'm going to do that. I'm not going to make a big deal and get myself thrown off of an airplane, but there are lots times when masks are optional, and I won't be wearing mine at those times.

Parsing the information based on policy (politics) vs pure medical science continues to be one of the significant challenges of this pandemic...

quote:

If someone is not fully vaccinated, *they* should be wearing a mask for their own protection.

I agree generally with this sentiment but I’ll keep wearing masks at least until vaccines are so plentiful that everyone who wants one could have had one already.


Also I’ll wear masks on planes forever, but I did before Covid too.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/i...7sqsAn5dzjg1pvV9jS38

"More Clarity on Post-Vax COVID
— Yes, risk of breakthrough infection is small, but beware of variants
by John Gever, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today April 21, 2021"