He was clearly dissuading widespread mask use back in March, but what he said specifically was: "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. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face." - Dr Fauci, March 8, 60 Minutes [0]

I do wish he'd said, instead, that masks provide asymmetric protection -- protecting the wearer less than protecting others from the wearer, and that ideally everyone would wear masks to protect each other, but that there were extreme shortages, and that first responders needed to be the priority for now. Or, something that included enough information to remain straightforwardly valid over time despite the situational dynamics.

edit -- in a July 15 interview with InStyle magazine [1] he said: "I don't regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct..."

"When it became clear that the infection could be spread by asymptomatic carriers who don't know they're infected, that made it very clear that we had to strongly recommend masks."

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-...

[1] https://www.instyle.com/news/dr-fauci-says-with-all-due-mode...