In the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci advised Americans not to wear masks in public. However, the CDC changed its masking advice on April 3, 2020, and imposed universal mask mandates. Ever since, conservative media has been skeptical of the change and continues to raise questions about the efficacy of masks.
Of course, we all remember that questioning the mandates was a surefire way to get suspended from social media — even if you cited a study concluding that masks were ineffective in protecting people from COVID-19. What about not wearing a mask? You might actually get arrested. What crazy times those were.
Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the architect of our country’s COVID response, was deposed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Yet, for all the mask evangelism by our top health officials, Fauci was unable to provide any studies that proved masks protect wearers from COVID-19.
Related: Dr. Fauci Can’t Remember Basic Facts About the Pandemic, yet He Still Shows up on TV
Is this surprising? Not really. For starters, Fauci knew they didn’t work. In the early weeks of the COVID pandemic, he privately admitted that typical store-bought masks don’t protect the wearer from the disease.
“Masks are really for infected people to protect them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci wrote in an email on Feb. 5, 2020. “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.”
Several studies proved this point.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada determined last summer that most cloth masks, such as the popular blue surgical masks, are only 10% effective, since they don’t properly cover the wearer’s mouth. N95 and KN95 masks do a better job but aren’t perfect. Those filter about 50% of exhaled aerosols. The study also found that proper ventilation systems can be just as effective as the best masks. “Even modest ventilation rates were found to be as effective as the best masks in reducing the risk of transmission,” the study concluded.
So it makes sense that, when questioned under oath, Fauci could not cite any studies to support recommending universal masking.
“He was asked what studies or study changed his mind in that interim, which is what he claimed — he claimed that it was studied. He couldn’t name any,” Jenin Younes, one of the lawyers in the room, told The Epoch Times.
Unfortunately, Fauci wasn’t the only one caving to political pressure and pushing the narrative instead of listening to the science. For example, back in July, the CDC acknowledged that “multiple studies have shown that transmission within school settings is typically lower than — or at least similar to — levels of community transmission when prevention strategies are in place in schools.” A month later, a CDC study showed no difference in infection rates between schools with and without mask mandates.
This should have ended the debate about masks in school right then and there. But it didn’t. Teachers’ unions successfully lobbied the CDC to keep the mask mandates in schools. Then, a month after the CDC study showed that mask mandates had no impact on COVID transmission rates, the CDC spewed out another study claiming the opposite. The new study was utterly bogus, but it gave the CDC the cover it needed to justify a recommendation that had no basis in science.
The sad reality is that politics has seeped into every aspect of society, including matters pertaining to public health. It would be nice to say that we just need to insulate public health officials from political influence, but I’m not sure the two can be separated anymore. Dr. Fauci and other health officials chose the narrative over the science, and sadly, the public’s trust in the our nation’s health agencies has suffered because of it.