But that’s not what they said. Fauci said “healthy people do not need to wear masks.” So he either lied then or is lying now. The reason for the lie is irrelevant. If healthy people should wear masks, the lack of production capability doesn’t change the fact.
If masks work and Fauci knew they worked, then his statement that healthy people don’t need masks was scientific fraud.
His exact words: “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.”
That statement was either patently false, or it was true and his current statements are patently false.
Did he lie in order to protect mask supplies? Did some new groundbreaking study come out during the next few months? Of course not. So why would a rational person trust anything coming from Fauci given that we don’t know if it’s the truth, or just some manipulative statement based on whatever the political need happens to be at the time? To be even more cynical, ask oneself why certain older mask-related research papers have been censored?
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/data-do-...
You’re actually missing the correct option which is that scientific consensus has shifted on this issue. Science is a process for the truth and conclusions can change with more evidence.
For example: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
There’s also the option that he was wrong and learned/was educated. A lot of scientific progress works like that. “He lied” implies intention.
what fauci said was true (given tolerance for the natural ambiguity inherent in speech). in most cases, masks have been, and continue to be, primarily a palliative and signaling device, not a mitigation. for healthcare workers, it's actually an augmentative mitigation used with other imperfect mitigations in controlled circumstances to get the best possible outcomes from their use. masks are poorer mitigations in most general circumstances in comparison to the easier alternative that is (context-specific) distancing.
at various points, he's buckled to the prevailing political winds to keep his job, but that particular statement was a moment of lucidity and frankness. it threatened the dominant mediopolitical narrative, so he eventually backed off.