Dr. Fauci became the face of American public health’s incoherent response to the pandemic. He urged the country to shut down weeks after dismissing early Covid worries as a baseless fear of “going to a Chinese restaurant”; he encouraged masking weeks after counseling against it; he aggressively cast the lab leak theory as fringe (though possible) despite many scientists wanting more to be done on lab safety. Just this April, Dr. Fauci said one day that we were “out of the pandemic phase” and the next day that we were “still experiencing a pandemic.”
Might Americans have mistrusted Dr. Fauci not only because of nefarious political forces but also because he gave them reason to believe that something was amiss in the citadels of science?…
Consider the flip-flop on masking. In that interview with Mr. Zuckerberg, Dr. Fauci said that he had initially advised against widespread masking because scientists then did not know that homemade cloth masks worked and needed to preserve professional-grade masks for health care workers. This is a reasonable-sounding explanation that is simply not what he said in February and March of that year: that even store-bought masks did not offer good protection, that “people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face,” and that unless you were infected “there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask.” He also said in July that scientists changed guidance once they learned the extent that Covid could spread asymptomatically — even though he had said in January there was “no doubt” it could.
There was nothing stopping Dr. Fauci in those chaotic early weeks from saying “Masks might help, but doctors and nurses need them more now,” or even just “We’re not sure yet.” This would have been far closer to accurately representing scientific understanding and would have done wonders in case the answer later changed, as many elements of guidance were bound to.
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