Thread: Fauci Struggles to Rescue Failed Claim ‘Masks Work,’ But Gets Destroyed

Fauci Struggles to Rescue Failed Claim ‘Masks Work,’ But Gets Destroyed by Mega-Thread on Actual ‘Science’

January 4, 2022
by Kyle Becker

Written by Kyle Becker



Dr. Anthony Fauci was right before he was wrong on the failed science that cloth masks and surgical masks “work” to significantly slow the spread of Covid-19.
Amid new questioning from “public health experts” in recent weeks that downplayed the efficacy of mask-wearing, Dr. Anthony Fauci is sticking to his argument that “masks work.” Why? Apparently, because he is “the Science” and because he says so. Watch:

“Are cotton and surgical masks effective at preventing the spread of Omicron?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked.
“Yeah, when the CDC says they are effective, in fact, they are,” Fauci claimed.
Before dismantling this fact-free claim from President Biden’s top Covid advisor, it is important to briskly go through Fauci’s evolution on this matter. It is not merely “flip-flopping.” It is inconsistent and unscientific.
“In late February and early March [of 2020]…, experts like Fauci and the US Surgeon General Jerome Adams advised Americans against wearing masks,” Business Insider reported.
The excuse that Fauci gave — that he lied to keep Americans from reducing the supplies of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for medical personnel — makes no sense in hindsight.
“I don’t regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm’s way every day to take care of sick people,” Fauci told O’Donnell.
“When it became clear that we could get 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,” he said.



It is critical to note that he not only lied to the American people by his own admission, he also lied about the reason he gave. This came out in a subsequent interview with Norah O’Donnell in July 2020.
“I don’t regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm’s way every day to take care of sick people,” Fauci told O’Donnell.
“When it became clear that we could get 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,” he added.
“And also, it soon became clear that we had enough protective equipment and that cloth masks and homemade masks were as good as masks that you would buy from surgical supply stores,” Fauci added. “So in the context of when we were not strongly recommending it, it was the correct thing.”
However, cloth masks and surgical masks have different ratings for the very low levels of filtration that they have against viruses. It should be noted that OSHA admits that surgical masks are not designed to protect against airborne pathogens.
Dr. Fauci got closer to revealing the truth in an email to a Health and Human Services official in February 2020.
“Sylvia: Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci wrote in the email.
“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material,” he admitted. “It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep[ing] out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you. I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location.”
Now that we know that the virus is airborne spread, as Fauci admitted, then his original assessment that he told a government official is actually the correct one.
Fauci nonetheless qualified his contradictory statements on mask-wearing by stating that it is ‘symbolic’ for people showing others that they ‘care.’
“I want to protect myself and protect others, and also because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that’s the kind of thing you should be doing,” Fauci told CNN’s Jim Sciutto in May.
Fauci said he believes that although wearing a mask is not “100% effective,” it shows “respect for another person.” Needless to say, this has nothing to do with “the science.”
The science as demonstrated by objective scientific facts and empirical data from the real-world is more unsparing than Fauci’s disingenuous pronouncements. A mega-thread by the appropriately named The Truth Hurts on Twitter lays it bare.
“Detailed thread on best science on efficacy of masks,” the Twitter user says. “Please read, comment and follow if you learned something. Unfortunately the data show that Masks don’t work. I wish they did. I would wear one.”
“The ‘gold standard of all clinical research, including medical interventions, is a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) using lab-verified results (or a systematic review of ALL previous RCTs),” he adds.




“A proper RCT removes bias by having control groups (each using a different intervention) and verified outcomes,” the thread continues. “Other types of studies (observational, mechanical studies, expert opinion, models) are used to develop hypotheses while RCTs are used to test the hypotheses. All RCTs have weaknesses.”
“One weakness of a mask-related RCT is mask compliance,” the thread notes. “Since these studies are outside of a lab there is no way to ensure 100% compliance. This is why RCTs in a healthcare setting are also important. Fortunately for us, a systemic review of all relevant RCTs funded by the HHS’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality entitled ‘Masks for Prevention of Viral Respiratory Infection among Healthcare Workers and the Public” was completed in June 2020’.”
“The conclusion of the systematic review of ALL mask-related RCTs was unambiguous”:



“RCTs in community settings found possibly no difference between N95 masks versus surgical masks and probably no difference between surgical versus no mask in risk for influenza and ILI [Influenza-Like Illnesses],” the meta-study states. “In healthcare settings, N95 and surgical masks were probably associated with similar risks for influenza and lab confirmed viral infection.”
“This review included 2 RCTs involving 1700 people tested whether a surgical mask reduces the risk of transmission,” the thread continues. “Conclusion was that there are no discernable differences in lab-confirmed influenza cases between the group that wore masks and the group that did not.”



“This review included 7 RCTs involving 4000 people testing whether surgical masks reduce transmission home with sick family member,” the thread adds. “Conclusion was that there are no discernable differences in lab-confirmed cases between the group that wore masks and the group that didn’t.”



“This review included 5 RCTs involving 8800 healthcare workers testing the differences in efficacy between cloth, surgical and N95 masks,” the thread notes. “Conclusion was that there are no discernable differences in lab-confirmed cases between efficacy of the different types of masks.”



“Each RCT comes to the same conclusion: There is no evidence of any discernable difference in lab confirmed transmission rates for those that wear and do not wear a mask (regardless of the type of mask),” the thread concludes.



The Twitter user then both provides an assessment, along with more notes on scientific studies backing up the inferences.
“In other words, MASKS DON’T WORK. So why are we being told that masks work? What would we have to believe in order to believe that mask do in fact work?” he asks.
“First, the maskers would have you believe, without scientific basis or explanation, that Covid is somehow so different from all other viral respiratory illnesses that ALL prior RCTs (the gold standard for data) are irrelevant and thus should be ignored from any review,” the thread says. “Then they replace this unbiased RCT science with expert opinion, models, mechanical analyses and other less scientifically reliable data.”
“None of these alternatives even attempt to measure actual disease transmission,” the thread continues. “For example, studies showing that droplets get captured in a mask might seem important unless you are knowledgeable enough to know that the implicit assumption that droplet capture results in reduced disease transmission has ALREADY BEEN PROVEN FALSE by all prior RCTs. Despite their admonition to ignore all pre-Covid RCTs, the maskers cherry pick data (by both time, sub-groups or non-measured outcomes) from RCTs that concluded that there was NO evidence for mask efficacy and try to tell us that these same studies MIGHT support mask efficacy.”
The mega-thread then provides an example of pseudo-science propagated by the pro-maskers. But I will add one more recent egregious case: The CDC Director touting a discredited study that purported to show that schoolchildren were at 3.5 times the risk from the virus if they didn’t wear masks. The Atlantic showed that it is complete “junk science.”
“But the Arizona study at the center of the CDC’s back-to-school blitz turns out to have been profoundly misleading,” the Atlantic states.
“You can’t learn anything about the effects of school mask mandates from this study,” Jonathan Ketcham, a public-health economist at Arizona State University, said. “His view echoed the assessment of eight other experts who reviewed the research, and with whom I spoke for this article.”
The Atlantic article goes on to cite a Bangladesh study, but doesn’t note that it has also been shredded. Dr. Scott Atlas in September rightly criticized the study:

One, in people defining Covid as symptoms plus anti-bodies, there is no evidence that cloth masks have any impact, no significant impact with cloth masks for people who have Covid as defined by Covid symptoms with antibody documentation. So cloth masks are worthless according to this study.
The second part is the surgical mask study. And the surgical mask study shows that there is from my reading here about an 11% decrease in individuals having symptomatic Covid with antibodies. 11%. And basically only older people. So what this shows you after all is said and done is it confirms that cloth masks are worthless. It shows – if you take the data at face value – a very minimal impact, 11%, decrease in symptomatic cases in mask usage by the village.

The Atlantic article additionally refers to the widely cited Georgia study on masking children in schools, which purportedly showed that “COVID was 37 percent lower in schools where staff were required to wear masks, and 21 percent lower in schools where that rule applied to kids.” it notes, crucially, although this does not appear to register with scientifically illiterate people, that the results were statistically insignificant, and even the authors noted that the data “cannot be used to infer causal relationships.”
Then there are the real-world cases, some of them approximating randomized control trials, that debunk the lie that masks do much of anything to stop the spread of viruses like Covid-19 among the general population.
This all builds up to recent revelations in the mainstream media by the perpetually wrong “public health experts” who are suddenly embracing the reality that masks don’t work after two years of outright lies. (This is the actual reason for Fauci’s narcissistic, fact-free insistence that they do work.)
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA chief who quickly transitioned after leaving office to become a Pfizer board member, has made an admission about cloth masks that should make Americans question the “science” they have been told was unquestionable all along.
Gottlieb appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” with host Margaret Brennan and punctured the widespread belief that cloth masks provide any significant protection from airborne respiratory viruses, such as Covid-19.


“I have been looking at pediatric hospitalizations at this record high,” Brennan claimed. “And concerned about sending my son back into a pre-school even with a mask on.”
“What do you tell parents?” she asked breathlessly. “Are cloth masks just not good enough anymore?”
“Cloth masks aren’t going to provide a lot of protection, that’s the bottom line,” he said. “This is an airborne illness. We now understand that. And a cloth mask is not going to protect you from a virus that spreads through airborne transmission. It could protect better through droplet transmission, something like the flu, but not this coronavirus.”
Eureka! Finally, the truth. And then there is Dr. Leanna Wen, a Covid-doomer who appears regularly on CNN.
“Don’t wear a cloth mask,” she said. “Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations. There’s no place for them in light of Omicron.”
So, there you have it. There are public health experts who are able to concede after nearly two years that masks don’t work and never worked against Covid-19, even if they pretend somehow the science has changed. It hasn’t. They were lying.
And these aren’t harmless “noble lies.” They are catastrophic for American society, and particularly for the most helpless among us: The children.
Masks aren’t symbol that people “care” about others, they are a ubiquitous reminder of the fear-mongering and paranoia about Covid, which does not pose a statistically significant risk to children. The mask-proponents are fueling a mental health crisis among the youngest Americans, and suddenly left-wing rags like the New York Times are pretending to care.
They don’t care. They will lie when it is politically expedient and only tell you the partial truth when it no longer becomes politically tenable.
The mask the “experts” truly believed in this entire time was the one they wore as they lied directly to Americans’ faces. It is the one that portrays them as “scientific experts” who truly care about the health and welfare of the people, when they really are nothing more than unscrupulous actors pushing a dishonest political agenda for profit and power.

NOW READ:


CDC Reversed Its Guidance & Forced Children to Wear Masks Because of Collusion with Teacher’s Unions
“The teacher’s unions appear to care more about the masks than about children. The CDC apparently cares more about political decision-making than about the ‘science.’ It’s hard to imagine a combination that is a greater betrayal of the public trust.”

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Fauci Struggles to Rescue Failed Claim 'Masks Work,' But Gets Destroyed by Mega-Thread on Actual 'Science' - Becker News

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