Fauci, in two interviews, seems to be conceding that COVID mask mandates were ‘a mistake’

It’s sure sounding like Anthony Fauci is conceding that the COVID mask mandates might have been, you know, loud whisper, a mistake.

A New York Times Q&A with Fauci and NYT writer David Wallace-Wells published on Monday had him equivocating on the mandates.

“From a broad public-health standpoint, at the population level, masks work at the margins — maybe 10 percent. But for an individual who religiously wears a mask, a well-fitted KN95 or N95, it’s not at the margin. It really does work,” Fauci started his defense of the mandates, before addressing the social and cultural impacts.

“I think anything that instigated or intensified the culture wars just made things worse. And I have to be honest with you, David, when it comes to masking, I don’t know. But I do know that the culture wars have been really, really tough from a public-health standpoint,” Fauci said.

“Ultimately an epidemiologist sees it as an epidemiological phenomenon. An economist sees it from an economic standpoint. And I see it from somebody in bed dying. And that’s the reason it just bothers me a lot — maybe more so than some others — that because of the culture wars you’re talking about, there are people who are not going to make use of an intervention that could have saved their lives.”

So, what Fauci said here is, for the broad population, the masks had a marginal effect, in the area of a 10 percent reduction in the spread of the COVID virus; it was more important to you that you wear the mask than it was important to your friends and neighbors, which is what the public-health campaigns sold us on.

Fauci went on “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday and went a little further on this point in a one-on-one with co-host Kaitlan Collins.

Collins pressed Fauci on his revelation in the NYT Q&A that “’from a broad public health standpoint,’ and I’m quoting you now, ‘at the population level, masks work at the margins, maybe 10 percent.’”

“You once said a national mask mandate could work,” Collins said. “That comment saying, you know, they work at the margins, maybe 10 percent, I think would raise a lot of eyebrows, given so many people had to wear a mask, whether they were on a plane, whether they were in certain public facilities.

“To hear that they only work at the margins, maybe 10 percent, would make a lot of people ask, OK, then what was I wearing a mask for so many times?”

Fauci’s response:

“You know, Kaitlan, we’ve got to be careful, because if you read very carefully what I said, if you look at the broad public health effect, when you have masks that are so-called mandated or supposed to be worn, because so many people don’t wear them, even though they’re in an arena in which masks are supposed to be worn or, they don’t wear them properly, from a public health standpoint on the cohort of people, the effect can be only marginal. As we mentioned, it was 10, 13 percent or so.

“But for the individual who religiously wears a properly fitted mask, the effect is much, much, much better than that. It’s 85, 90 percent or more. So, we were trying to distinguish between what the broad effect on a population is when you have mask-wearing versus the effect on the individual who religiously and properly wears the mask. There’s a big difference there. That’s what we were referring to about on the margins versus an individual effect of a person.”

Interpreted: again, we were sold that masking up would protect our friends and neighbors, but really, the masks, when worn properly, would protect you; the effect of you wearing your mask on your friends and neighbors was marginal.

The discrepancy here is the source of our culture and political wars of the past three years.

We weren’t only sold that the mandates would help others around us, but that the science behind that thinking was infallible.

Turns out that the leading proponent of that thinking isn’t so sure now.

Collins’ follow-up: “In hindsight, though, when you look at this, do you think the mask mandates were a mistake?”

“You know, I, Kaitlan, I don’t want to say a mistake,” Fauci said, “but I think we really need to remember next time where we’re confronted with this, that when you have a situation where there’s doubt in the minds of some people about whether something works or not, we better try to reach out and be a better explainer of why we feel these things are important. Because whenever, particularly in our country, with our free spirit, which we all embrace, that people being told what to do very often has the opposite effect. That’s what I was referring to in that interview.”