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Comment by coolso | Hacker News Reader

Fauci told 60 Minutes on March 8th, 2020:

> “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.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/preventing-coronavirus-facemask...

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Albert Einstein:

> Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One. I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice.

Scientists get things wrong. I'm more concerned about someone who won't change their position when better information becomes available.

Did better information become available, or was he misleading the public to prevent people buying too many masks making it harder for medical staff to acquire them?

Either way the quote is important to inform people who may not be aware, that a Fauci quote is not necessarily the end all be all factual information the media would have you believe it is.

> Did better information become available...

Yes. We have significantly more information on the utility of cloth and surgical masking than we did in March of 2020.

Ahh, so the Asian countries that have been using them for decades, as well as medical workers all over, have been hiding their secrets from us until after March 8th, 2020.

Perhaps the real answer is a little bit of both things can be true? That is, if you don’t consider Fauci an infallible deity?

Asian countries have been using them in part due to pollution. In March 2020, there wasn't much literature on the efficacy of it for disease prevention; we now have a lot more information on this.

Healthcare workers are trained not to "keep fiddling with the mask"; that aspect of Fauci's quote seems to indicate some of the concern was not the theoretical mechanics of masking, but the more practical aspects of having the untrained public doing it.

No they weren't. Those are two different masks.

The Fauci quote was definitely a veil to hide the truth. But it's only a thin veil.

>we now have a lot more information on this.

Even little kids have enough information to know that blocking your mouth when sneezing or coughing stops germs. Don't blame it on discoveries or inventions. It's not new information, it's just the full house that wipes your account.

The real answer is that some people hide facts for political gain. Actually, most people do. It's a shame really.

That statement hasn't been proven wrong.

Proven, no. But our current best theory after 100 yeasts says “yes, it seems dice is played.” It’s the deterministic curmudgeons who keep trying to find a way to ignore that!

All that's proven is that statistical models are a good fit for something we don't really understand. No different than using epicycles to solve the problem of planetary motion.

You're wrong and and so was he and you definitely shouldn't weigh in since I'm sure you're not nearly as qualified as he was (neither wrt physics nor virology):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test

Yeah, and humanity used to believe in miasma theory too. Fauci being wrong and then correcting himself later is a good thing, actually.

Fauci provably lied to congress about gain of function research funding. Is that a "good thing" too?

Not comparable. If they believed in miasma whilst also eating out of the trash it may make sense. The same way believing masks don't work but then covering your mouth to cough does...

It's not a good thing since he wasn't correcting himself, he was misinforming others whilst knowing what he was saying wasn't accurate.

I don't really care, since most of the quote is good information and the rest of the quote was made to serve a political purpose.

And to be fair - even that quote "It doesn't provide the perfect protection people think it does" and "people touch the masks".

The science on masks points to them helping when used correctly, but many people use them incorrectly - not following the proper procedure for putting them on, taking them off, reuse and disposal.

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