And in the process lost a significant portion of trust in public health measures. Saying the don't work is very different than saying they are short in supply and blocking sales temporarily or something. Second one is much easier to reverse without teaching public to second guess every public health directive from there on.
> On February 19, Fauci told USA Today, “In the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask.” On March 8, as scientists estimated tens of thousands of undetected Covid cases in the US, Fauci told 60 Minutes, “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.”
You can decide for yourself, but to me he was pretty clearly trying to make people think masks don't work masks don't work while leaving a small sliver of plausible deniability.
This whole article makes a compelling case that he's really just as much of a calculating politician as anyone in Washington https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-case-against-fauci/. And he's done a great job branding himself because most people seem to think the opposite, until you look at him closer.
