Remember, the official word just last March was that masks don't work. Those who pushed back on that were harassed, called anti-science and suppressed.
Why are people still under any illusion that they know what should be censored?
Why are people still under any illusion that they know what should be censored?
More transmissible strains means higher threshold for herd immunity, so yeah Fauci is right in this case to increase it given the spread of the UK, SA and Brazil strains.
> but even if I'm wrong, it means he was lying before and has confessed now.
Terrible logic.
He said he hesitated to state a number as high as 90% weeks ago because many Americans still seemed skeptical about vaccine.
“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci, who took his first dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday, told The Times. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85. -- https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/dec/24/anthony-fau...
Further, this statement was made at approximately the same time that the UK variant was being discovered. There wasn't time for new R(t) numbers to be estimated. He was admitting to misleading us before the UK variant.
> Go straight to the science.
Yeah. So the model for herd immunity is well known: HI=(1-(1/R)). And we also have a good estimate of R(0) from CDC, about 2.5. That yields 60%. Following the science directly tells us that Fauci was actually telling the truth before, and it's today that he's lying.
Things change as they learn more. That's how this works. Saying they "lie" to you is stupid. They're telling you what they know, as they learn it.
They are STILL learning new things and will be for years, which will change how we address and deal with this.
For them to lie would mean they magically know everything about it and specifically choose not to tell you.
In the case of both of Fauci's lies, he DID know the correct answer, but chose to mislead the public.
His statements about masks were later justified by a claimed need to reserve PPE for medical personnel. And from my explanation in cousin comment[1], knowing the science shows us that he was actually telling the truth initially about herd immunity, and has recently changed his story to something not supported by the science.
Now, there's surely an argument to be made for managing the information to prevent panic, and to guide people into doing the right thing. But I don't think that's valid in a system that's supposed to be founded on democracy, self governance, a government "of the people, by the people". If we're going to let supposed experts run things with no input from the people, then we have some kind of technocratic oligarchy, and not a democracy.