Iirc, he was asking a CDC official whether the application of a disinfectant to infected lungs had been investigated. A stupid idea on its face, but at no point did he recommend the consumption of bleach as a cure or a treatment for covid.
I agree that the use of face masks is commonsense and should become a part of life, like it has been in asian countries since at least SARS. But to imply that the directives from health officials has remained the same is either ignorant or deceitful.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/fauci-doesnt-regret-advis...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-guideline-mask-vaccinated-c...
IIRC it sounded like some badly mangled reference to this, which itself is a pretty wild idea:
However, the rise in bleach poisonings seems to have predated his statement, and pundit's subsequent interpretation
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/38-rise-in-bleach-po...
There are plenty of exceptional reasons to have a low opinion of the man, and call him irresponsible with the platform he had. No reason to make up more.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28004191
As for the rise of bleach ingestion, that was happening prior to this out of context news even admitted by left leaning sources.
Top health official is talking about UV light killing the virus, person replies asking questions about possibility of UV light used for disinfecting the lungs as the technology was patented that week, media turns this into "person tells people to inject bleach", ideologues believe whatever media sells them without any questioning, ideologues blame the person instead of media for spreading disinformation, ideologues censor the person.
Partisan hackery isn't helping when the media is lying and ideologues choose to go along with it. Maybe it's time for ideologues to re-consider their own beliefs.