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Do you have any references for this? Our understanding of Covid evolved pretty rapidly during the pandemic and as usual hindsight is 20/20.
I have no doubt that *you* are convinced of your statement. I'd just like to understand what data you based your conviction on.
'Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.'"[1]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250501225159/https://www.thest...
I'm an airline brat and have flown millions of miles and been in two emergency landings involving fires. If you're ever in a similar situation, you and everybody around you better hope the crew sticks to protocol rather than worrying about bruising your precious long-term trust.
In case you didn't understand my point because you don't work in healthcare, PPE for people dealing with the crisis was real fucking slim.
You're Fauci, trying to convince assholes to do the right thing. Go:
First, it's not clear that a significant number of people were hoarding TP at all. The best info I've read suggests that the reason for shortages were changing usage patterns: people would have been pooping at work, but since they weren't going to work, they pooped at home. Thus, sales changed from bulk institutional packaging to retail consumer products. The shortage was because the pipeline for retail products emptied, and manufacturers couldn't switch gears and distribute the alternative fast enough.
Second, you have the timeline wrong. On February 29, the Surgeon General told the public to stop buying masks. On March 8, Fauci told 60 Minutes "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask."
Only later, during the week of March 16, 2020, toilet paper panic buying exploded. According to NCSolutions (a retail data tracker), toilet paper sales skyrocketed compared to the previous month. And as of April 19, 2020, almost half of U.S. grocery stores experienced stockouts of toilet paper at some point during the day.
But more to the point, though, let's assume your right. Is it right for our leaders to manipulate our behavior by lying to us? For me, it seems like the minute that starts happening, we're a democracy in name only. The fact that the government is "of the people" is really then just a technicality.
To me, the liberal enlightenment ideals in our Constitution and Bill of Rights are what have made us the greatest power the world has ever seen. This is a philosophical thing that I don't think anyone can prove or disprove (until maybe after it's too late), but I think we should follow those ideals at all times, and not consider them inconveniences to be swept out of the way when technocrats find them problematic.
If your claim is that giving people access to "all the information" will allow them to make informed decisions and lead to utopia, the internet disproved that long ago.
Yes, it did. Just a few minutes ago when I pointed it out. Or are you the only one who's allowed to identify what principles are implicateed in the conversation?
I have no idea what you mean by "the internet disproved that long ago". But you seem to be setting this up as a false choice fallacy.
It can be simultaneously true that, on one hand, there's no need to exhaustively publicize every fact all the time; while also true that the leadership of a democracy providing false information to its citizens subverts the very foundations of democracy.
"Ducking and covering" isn't going to do anything in a nuclear strike, but if telling people that it will do something means they stay calm and don't go into a panic stockpiling guns and food (or abandoning all civilized principles altogether in a nihilistic fit), then telling them that is justified.
OK, so at least we're being honest now and not pretending it's a democracy anymore. But who is it that decides when it's something of sufficient severity that we must lie?
You want to allocate resources to where they will have the biggest impact, and you want to ensure you don’t run out of resources for the most critical uses. They were transparent about this from the beginning.
He chose to allocate resources for the contemporaneous crisis at the expense of the trust needed to manage future crises. Maybe you objectively think that was the correct choice, but it's revisionist to claim that that wasn't the choice he made.
See also "Just asking questions."
1. Fauci admitted on TV that he'd been misleading the public about herd immunity numbers. He said he'd painted a rosier picture than reality in order to avoid making the world fear that we could never overcome the pandemic. -- https://thenationaltelegraph.com/opinion/dr-fauci-admits-to-...
2. Fauci admitted in Congressional hearing that the 6-foot social distancing rule was made up, with no experimental evidence. -- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/03/anthon...
3. Slightly more controversially, Fauci misled us by dissembling under questioning by Sen. Paul. By a strict technocratic definition that nobody he was talking to was privy to, he told the truth when he steadfastly maintained that there had been no GoF research. But by the plain meaning of the words, he was clearly lying. -- https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/04/fauci-says-rand-paul-egregio...
I'm not sure these citations are the best, I don't have time to read through all of it, but hopefully it's illustrative.
I see a need to mock and ostracize and to try to twist others' statements and words.
Do you not see that too? If there are better links to support your incendiary phrasing of points, it may help get the point across better. But I'm not sure you can find something that's not trying to misrepresent and sensationalize the issue.
For #1, about herd immunity numbers, consider the below. I don't see any space for interpretation here: Fauci flat-out admitted to changing what he told the public in order to manipulate their (our!) behavior:
In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”
In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.
[...]Dr. Fauci said that weeks ago, he had hesitated to publicly raise his estimate because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.
“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 said. “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.” “We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”
-- https://archive.is/20210305032312/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
Regarding #2, this is also pretty clear. Here's another citation, which also seems pretty clear.
The 6ft social distancing guidance enforced in the US during the Covid pandemic “sort of just appeared”, Dr Anthony Fauci, the former White House medical adviser, has admitted.
It was “likely not based on data”, Dr Fauci conceded in a behind-closed-doors session of the House select subcommittee on the Coronavirus pandemic.
-- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/12/anthony-fa...
For #3, I acknowledged from the start that this is more subjective. If we judge solely by academic jargon, then Fauci was telling the truth. The thing is, it's not reasonable to judge solely by that academic jargon when Fauci wasn't talking to fellow members of the academy. He was being questioned by Congress, and one expects an intelligent guy like him to be able to communicate effectively. When speaking to politicians and ultimately to the public, he should be aware of the language he uses.
EDIT: Sorry to jump back into the same post. But I want to emphasize that the root question we're arguing about here is loss of trust. We don't need a mathematically airtight proof that Fauci was lying. I just need to demonstrate that the institution, and Fauci specifically, said things that for reasonable listeners could be construed in ways that destroyed trust. I think what I've illustrated clears that threshold easily.
You might be factually right that the story changed over time. But to me, none of these feel like misdeeds. They seem like reasonable & adequate (outright necessary?) steps taken along a hard road we all faced.
What would you have had Faucci do during #1 & #2?
I'd have him not lie. At a minimum, if he thought that the truth would drive counterproductive behavior, he should have at least kept his mouth shut.
But as a public servant, one of the leaders in our democracy, I think he owes it to us to actually tell us the truth, even when it doesn't seem to serve his immediate goals.
HN is usually pretty positive on democratic principles, that it should be We The People driving rather than elites. But when the democracy is being steered behind the scenes, being misled into provoking us into the behaviors that the elites think are best for us, then that democracy is in name only. Functionally we've then become an oligarchy.
Americans have already proven they are too stupid for such nuance over the last decade or so.
For me, this comparatively benign explanation of his behavior became much less plausible when the details of the EcoHealth arrangement became public.
I'm not a big believer in the current so-called criminal justice system as a way to establish... well, justice, but I do think that a trial in open court for his crimes - even just the unambiguous perjury - was likely to be healing and perhaps restorative for our institutions of scientific research.