Since this talking point won't die, here's all the evidence that Fauci did not lie on masks. Fauci was incorrect on masks re: the coronavirus, but no he wasn't lying. Those distinctions should matter when we talk of public policy. There's plenty Fauci got wrong that we shouldn't have to make up stuff about him.
There was an actual PPE shortage in the beginning that did inform them on masks, but they also did believe asymptomatic transmission was not significant at the time:
“I mean, back then, the critical issue was to save the masks for the people who really needed them because it was felt that there was a shortage of masks. Also, we didn’t realize at all the extent of asymptomatic spread and that a person who could be without symptoms at all could inadvertently and innocently spread it to someone who was uninfected.”
“But what happened is that as the weeks and months came by, two things became clear: one, that there wasn’t a shortage of masks. We had plenty of masks and covering that you could put on that, plain cloth covering. That took care of that problem. Secondly, we fully realized that there were a lot of people who were asymptomatic who were spreading infection. So it became clear that we absolutely should be wearing masks consistently.”
Plus on February 2020 Fauci wrote Burwell a private email saying this:
"Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you. I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a vey low risk location."
So he did really think this about mask efficacy.
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/06/scicheck-viral-posts-pundits-distort-fauci-emails
More centrally the CDC in its guidance change literally said and cited the studies that informed them on asymptomatic transmission:
"We now know from recent studies that a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus lack symptoms (‘asymptomatic’) and that even those who eventually develop symptoms (‘pre-symptomatic’) can transmit the virus to others before showing symptoms,” the CDC said in its announcement. “In light of this new evidence, CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”
And mask efficacy against the coronavirus became clearer despite its small size:
"Early on in the pandemic, prevention messaging was coming primarily from infectious disease experts who have little to no training in aerosol science,” Alex Huffman, an aerosol scientist at the University of Denver, told us in an email. “As the pandemic discussion has become more multidisciplinary, scientists and medical professionals of all descriptions have learned from one another, and realized that the narrow, disciplinary perspectives they may have started with were often insufficient to properly address the airborne nature of this particular disease.”
"So, as Huffman explained to us, it’s true that the virus might be 0.1 or 0.2 microns and a paper or cloth mask wouldn’t filter something that small. But “viruses don’t fly out of your mouth by themselves. They are encased in droplets,” he said. Those droplets come from the lungs, nose or mouth and include proteins, salts and some viruses.
“It doesn’t matter how big the virus is, it matters how big the droplet is,” Huffman said.
While that may not have been widely understood by public health officials at the beginning of the pandemic, “to Dr. Fauci’s great credit,” Huffman said, “he changed his perspective, learned a little about aerosol physics, and started listening to a broader audience of experts, including aerosol scientists.”"
And Fauci was going off of the consensus at the time. SARS did not have significant asymptomatic transmission like SARS-COV-2. People incorrectly assumed they would behave the same. Asymptomatic transmission had not been a key source of spread before:
" On Jan. 28, 2020, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, “In all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. … Even if there’s a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.”
While viruses often have asymptomatic infection, asymptomatic infections don't necessarily imply asymptomatic transmission. As we saw this pandemic with the vaccinated infected pre-Delta variant.
https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/23/asymptomatic-infection-blunder-covid-19-spin-out-of-control/
They were wrong here. That's different than lying.
Here's also Scott Alexander talking about the evidence for masks at the time and how during Swine Flu which also didn't have asymptomatic transmission, they again recommended against masks in public when there wasn't a PPE shortage:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know
