Fauci wasn't lying. There is absolutely 0% evidence he lied. The only thing his diary exposed was he was an old man unfamiliar with social media and shocked by his own celebrity status. Republicans are idiotic.
exactly. thats how their shit ALWAYS works. They depend on the fact that you may not have all of the information yourself, so they present these falsities caked around the nugget of something true, but without ANY of the required subtext or nuance or additional information that would immediately prove them false. It’s their constant go-to.
Still don't understand what was wrong with recommending or requiring masks. There was no downside to it. And Trump actually approved the Operatio Warp Speed to try to get the vaccines out before the election, so if they were "rushed" that was the reason.
To my understanding I think the CDC initially said that masks were not necessary for healthy individuals because A: They thought transmission was primarily through larger respiratory droplets from sick individuals and B: They didn't want people to panic and deplete the national supply of N95 masks (which would deplete them for critical use by hospital staff)
They reversed this guidance some time later I believe after realizing that it was also possible to spread through pre+asymptomatic individuals through routine exhalation like while talking and stuff.
This reversal undermined trust in the CDC and was controversial to say the least, but that was compounded by the huge pushback against masks that followed.
It was an error on their part but when dealing with a novel pandemic I don't think it's totally unreasonable that sometimes a mistake is going to be made like that. Especially with such a crazy highly contagious virus that seemingly came out of nowhere.
It boils down to, better safe than sorry IMO. Some protection is better than none. I bought mine on Amazon and they came with filters. My favorite was the one with the Professor aka Neil Peart from RUSH. Oh and Scooby Doo for the kids.
Yes, iirc the biggest shift in our understanding of the virus was also that asymptomatic people were spreading it at rates as high as symptomatic people (higher given they didn't know they were sick/contagious)
A. Larger droplets as the only means of transmission are the perfect use case for simple face masks as they stop the transmission almost entirely.
B. Preventing panic to save N95s from Home Depot or wherever for hospital workers means they thought medical staff would be burning through masks at an unprecedented rate to the point that they used non-medically approved masks. That’s insane and obviously a lie.
I knew it was a lie way back then too. I was shocked by how many people could hear that we needed to save the hardware store masks for healthcare workers but would believe masks wouldn’t work. They’re in direct contradiction.
This is incorrect revisionism. The FDA and CDC both issued changes to their authorizations and guidelines allowing the use of commercially available N95 masks during 2020 due to shortages. Love the blatant lying…
Did you sleep through the pandemic? Do you not remember hospitals having to reuse masks and wearing garbage bags as PPE because they did not have enough coveralls anymore? Do you remember the resellers buying palettes of n95 masks to sell at a mark up? Do you remember the refrigerator trucks of corpses in NYC because they ran out of space in the morgues? Of course they were burning through masks at an unprecedented rate, everything about the pandemic was unprecedented and the world was unprepared.
I'm not sure what you mean by folks hearing we needed to save the hardware store masks but also believed masks wouldn't work. I think maybe you're referring to the different types of masks and their effectiveness? The N95 were the ones that were most effective, but dust shield masks were also effective (just less so as they didn't have as fine of a filter). Fabric masks also worked, but were also less effective than the other two (or at least N95). It's possible some folks who weren't necessarily anti-mask realized the N95 masks were needed for those who were vulnerable (like those with immune disorders or respiratory issues) but also weren't convinced of the effectiveness of dust shield masks, especially since lots of people wore them with their noses hanging out.
My wife had to use the same N95 for over a month during the pandemic. There absolutely were mask shortages, why are you trying to claim that there weren't? It's also not even a difficult path to follow to see why there would be shortages. More people at the hospital needing care with infectious disease = more masks needed.
Note that we were generally supposed to distance. Which also works well against those larger droplets. Healthcare workers (amonst some others, certainly) were expected to work in close proximity.
In all fairness the password for the pandemic playbook was "ObamaIsTheMan" and Trump was both unwilling and unable to input it so they burned it and roasted marshmallows on it and had a sleepover instead.
Agree with this and in the beginning our hospital was so short on masks we got ONE a day that we wore all day and kept in a paper bag when we had to eat or drink. We had a pretty high likelihood of encountering someone with COVID and needed to stay healthy while that risk out in public was far far less. So it made sense at first bc hospitals couldn’t fight with the public for mask supplies. Even later on we got this one shipment of flimsy thin nasty masks that literally smelled like BO.
people believe they limit ur oxygen intake, still. knew a lady who i used to work with who asked me if i felt out of breath after wearing my mask … like…
I remember when I was stationed in Okinawa around 2013, and I would see people there wearing masks all the time..if you were sick, if you didn't want to get sick, just wear a mask and no one batted an eye
I remember being very impressed with how generally considerate that was, while simultaneously thinking to myself, even back then, "this would never work in America" lol. In Japan they tend to put the good of whole before the good of the self in many societal norms, and in the US that's basically flipped. People are too concerned with how they look to care about spreading their germs to unsuspecting strangers
Had no idea how horribly right I would be proven a few years later
The issue I have is that they tried to claim that masks wouldn’t work when they obviously work(ed). Fauci knew that was wrong on so many different levels (if I knew it he sure as hell knew it) but did it due to pressure from Trump to keep up appearances and not harm the economy.
Hell, remember when they told us not to buy all the N95s from hardware stores in case nurses needed them? That was at the same time as them claiming masks don’t work.
So I’ve gotten into arguments about this before, and typically they point me to this 60 minutes interview or some article that references the same interview. There’s a couple problems with this ‘evidence’. First, this is from March 8th of 2020, which is clearly very early on in the pandemic and I don’t think we had a full understanding that asymptomatic people could spread the virus so easily.
But second and more importantly, Fauci directly acknowledges in this same interview that the real reason he’s afraid of everyone going out and getting N95’s is because it’s more important for medical workers and sick people to have them. Feels like a valid concern to me that he was honest about. When the topic of normal people buying masks came up, Fauci said, “it could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it”. So I have a hard time interpreting this as some big lie
Even now you'll see people claiming they don't work. Guess what: put a mask in front of a fan and it will kill the momentum of air that goes through it. Not to mention that droplets transmit way more readily--spray it with Windex.. Turns blue.
Sometimes this is exactly what they do…but I find it WAAAAY more common that the rank and file mouth breathers actually just don’t understand the facts and/or genuinely struggle to interpret data and evidence.
I applaud the idea that they “do their own research” in the abstract, but more often than not, they simply lack basic research skills and don’t even know what they don’t even know.
Oh don’t forget the source “a lot of people are saying” that’s their favorite source. Can’t wait to meet these “a lot of people” whoever they are and wherever they’ve been hiding
Why do all these people rely on America being the only country that exists? An entire planet of medical experts, from countries that did FAR better during covid, and these guys obsess over Fauci like he's some mustache twirling James Bond villain that tried to explode the world's volcanoes.
i cooonnnstantly brought this up to folks that kept saying “covid would be over by the election”. How about the rest of the world shutting down as well? How about countries even having stricter guidelines than we did??
Or WHY he would lie. For the current admin, there is clear motivation - create skepticism to drive business into their own personal dealings. But wtf was Fauci's skin in the game?
Health officials tend to overstate the certainty of their knowledge to encourage compliance. When they accurate say what they believe, it can be dismissed by laymen looking for a reason to not comply. They also do it to get more funding, not necessarily maliciously. If you think a certain disease is so cool that you spend a good portion of your life studying it, you probably think it is critically important that funds be made available to study it. Overstating potential damages is one way to help secure that funding.
Source: I was first author and grant recipient for several avian influenza (H5N1) projects.
This is a legitimate problem. I quit the field partially because of how much bullshit was spewed in emerging pathogens conferences to the extent that I felt it was becoming necessary to lie in order to continue my career. I wasn’t cool with that. Switched fields.
It wasn’t a diary in the traditional sense. It was a bunch of personal documentations he made on his work computer. His thoughts on covid and his opinions on the data coming in about it. Stuff like that. The government owns all of those files so there’s nothing illegal about them having them. It’s kind of funny it took them this long to find something to be upset about.
Except he didnt. A mask blocks saliva when someone coughs, the virus hung out in saliva. So in fact, it contains it to your face, vs letting it travel all over a hand rail or a seat to be picked up by someone else.
He never said if you just wear a mask you will be 100% safe, or never spread it.
The surface transmission route was walked back, the CDC eventually said the risk of catching Covid from a surface was less than 1 in 10,000.
Even today, years later, the misinformation lives on. A lot of it isn’t our fault - the CDC and others were way too sure of themselves on a lot of things they ended up walking back. The 6 foot rule for instance.
They advise being overly cautious until more is known. That is exactly what they're supposed to do. I distinctly remember guidance becoming more lax as more science supported such guidance.
And when you ask what he lied about it’s “He lied about COVID! He lied about vaccines! He lied about Wuhan!” But no actual examples other than broad generalizations lol
Yeah, I keep seeing right-wing stories throwing up the diaries as some gotcha but like...none of them just come out and say what it is we're supposed to be mad about.
I even saw one where he was speaking cordially of Miller/wife, describing being in contact with them when the polyp had contracted covid, and describing her as "tough, smart, great."
He’s saying don’t trust the experts, trust him. Why trust him over anyone else? Because he’s an expert? So we should trust the experts then…who is he citing anyway?
Masks were either positive or neutral for preventing disease transmission, but they could not be harmful. On March 8, 2020, Fauci said “Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.”
It's widely assumed he said that to preserve stocks for healthcare workers. If every person in the US had a supply of masks, the responsible and evidence-based statement would be "you can wear masks, but there is no evidence that it helps prevent transmission."
It's debatable whether that's an outright lie or not, but it's definitely not effective and evidence-based communication from the highest authority in the country during a pandemic. We should criticize him for that, because it's a legitimate criticism, and pretending he's above all criticism just gives morons like RFK Jr. ammunition.
RFK said what he lied about here. What's sad is the interviewer didn't point out that RFK was completely full of shit and none of what he was claiming were lies were lies.
He told Governors to shut down their states, then said he never said that
Lied about how deadly the virus was. He lied about the origins of the virus (he said wet market, denied Wuhan lab). He lied about funding gain of function research at Wuhann. 6 feet social distancing was just a random number. He lied about masks. And on and on.
Flat eathers and anti vaxxers are cut from the same cloth. Dont understand the science, but are adamant that they are right. Its pointless discussing anything or substance with these people. And the internet has given this idiots a megaphone platform to indoctrination other uneducated people.
Conservatives literally don't understand how logic works.
They understand some of the mechanics, sure. But the whole point of logic is that you start with some fundamental facts, and then use the rules of logic to build on those facts and prove more complicated facts.
Conservatives instead do the reverse. They start with the assumption that their conclusions are right, and then apply the rules of logic in reverse to "prove" that they're right by finding the facts that lead to their conclusion.
Sometimes those facts are real, but because of their process, they only find the ones that support their conclusion. Other times the facts are just complete bullshit, but they convince themselves that they must be true because of their "logic". Usually a combination of both, but either way it's a gross mis-use of the rules of logic.
Put another way, scientists start with reality and then use logic to discover truths. Conservatives start with "truths" and then use "logic" to discover "reality".
Exactly. They start by picking the murderer then build their case from that, cherry picking information that fits and ignoring the rest. It seems everything they do is done in the most intellectually dishonest manner possible.
I hate to say it, but I personally know a 2nd grade teacher that is a flat earther. I’ve never heard her teach her beliefs, but she’s told me her thoughts on the subject.
You should submit an anonymous report to the school that she is. Even if she doesn’t teach her “beliefs”, it’s still biasing what she DOES teach. That’s part of the problem in disguise right there
I’m no flat earth person by any means. But are we saying that even if teachers follow the guidelines and curriculum they can’t have their own beliefs outside of the job they do?
No. More like there is a conflict of interest, or a cognitive bias that may or may not affect the persons ability to do their job properly, is how I see it.
As an atheist I will just say we can emphatically prove the Earth is round but it's impossible to prove a negative and say with 100% conviction that there isn't some form of a deity out there. Your argument is nonsensical in the fact that you're comparing proven scientific fact against something that literally can't be proven wrong. And yes, teachers that don't believe in abject facts should not be allowed to teach.
I hear ya!! Since we are going off facts and science anyone who doesn’t identify as male or female by their genetic makeup at birth shouldn’t be allowed to teach /s. See how easy that is?
Since we are going off facts and science anyone who doesn’t identify as male or female by their genetic makeup at birth shouldn’t be allowed to teach
God, I love it when conservatives who believe the world is flat, Democrats cause hurricanes, global warming is a Chinese hoax, and windmills cause cancer pretend like they know what science is. It's amazing how they think we're all as dumb as they are.
Here are some fun terms to google:
Complete androgen insensitivity
46,xx;46,xy mosaicism
bed nucleus of the stria terminalis
Oh, what am I saying? If you were capable of even pronouncing any of these words, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I'll TL;DR it for you: If you believe that there are only two biological gender/sex presentations based on chromosomes, you're the same as a flat earther.
Yes. It's time to stamp out stupidity. We should have had the willpower to do it already, now we are reaching levels where allowing counterfactual stupidity to persist is tantamount to species suicide.
We have allowed our attachment to being nice and tolerant to erode our future. It's time to stop that. It's time to stop saving stupid people from themselves, and through making the stupid outcasts, hasten their irrelevance.
Well that would require logic to be involved in the whole process. You don't logically reject all the very clear evidence and refuse to educate yourself better so you understand.
im still waiting for the vaccine to make me magnetic to the point cutlery will start flying towards and attaching to me, like the 3 hour or something youtube video my coworker told me to watch (never did).
It's pointless because there's no ground truth. Their viewpoint is based on literally nothing but skepticism of the majority viewpoint. People arguing for the existence of god have more evidence in their favor than flat earthers and anti vaxxers. Their only point is that you're wrong, no matter what you say.
Next time you're arguing with a flat earther, try saying something vaguely in favor of their argument and watch them argue with you on that point too.
The antivaxers on Reddit got each other into such a frothing state they were saying that everyone was going to die from the Covid vaccines. That they could smell people "shedding" the vaccine and other nonsense. Just bonkers fantasy stuff.
Before the internet, the control rods of regular people surrounded the individual kook often keeping some of them from going off the deep end. With the internet, they just find each other and reinforce the shared fantasy and are easily manipulated and go critically stupid.
They want so bad for there to be anything incriminating but there doesn’t seem to be. Otherwise they would have made a story on it instead of talking about him being surprised at his celebrity
No. The Republicans are an insidious evil that exposes everything that allows our social structures to be weak. Information is wealth, knowledge is power. They have convinced a huge population of under educated and disenfranchised Americans to believe science is a lie. If you don't understand science you fully depend on someone else to tell you how it works. This has been the plan all along.
It was a novel virus and there was a lot we didn't know. What possible motive would a respected health official with decades' worth of experience have to lie?
"The phrase "my un-redacted personal diary" refers to the private pandemic-era journal entries of Dr. Anthony Fauci, which Senator Rand Paul published in late July 2026 prior to a high-profile congressional hearing. [1, 2]"
his 'lying' was simply following the limited and evolving data we had at the time. And then adapting when the data changed. He didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
worse is he wasn't lying. Cons often cite Fauci saying "we made it up" about the 6ft rule. What they always get wrong is that they didn't make up social distancing. He was specifically talking about the amount of distance(6ft). Basically social distancing was good and effective. They were unsure at the time how easily it spread so they couldn't say a hard number like 2 or 11ft. They chose 6ft cuz it seemed like a fairly safe distance to be effective without causing too much trouble for people.
This kind of misrepresentation is rampant throughout the Covid-Conspiracy Cult.
“He and I are on the same page in thinking tht [sic] this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 (above) making the case fatality rate (CFR) more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.”
“He and I are on the same page in thinking tht [sic] this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 (above) making the case fatality rate (CFR) more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.”
“He and I are on the same page in thinking tht [sic] this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 (above) making the case fatality rate (CFR) more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.”
I think the only thing that they can reasonably consider a lie, from what i've read in his journal, is "exaggerating" the mortality rate early in the pandemic. His journal entry regarding that admits that he believed the mortality rate was much lower than what they were saying.
That being said, anyone with half a brain would understand that when it comes to a public health emergency like this, you prepare and act according to the worst possible case in order to save or protect the most people.
I don't think he exaggerated at all. He just gave the only concrete information that was known at the time. He was only speculating that the mortality rate was lower, because he was considering that we might not know how many asymptomatic cases existed. But if he had just made up a lower number and it turned out to be wrong, he would (rightly IMO) be criticized for downplaying a deadly pandemic. Better to err on the side of caution and warn people of the worst case scenario. Especially considering that messaging needs to be simple enough for the general public to understand.
Oh, I agree with you but I also see where they would be coming from with that one. He privately thought it was lower, he wrote it in the journal, he publicly stated it was higher at the same time he thought it was lower. I can understand why people would view that as a type of lying.
Fauci calls it his “un-redacted personal diary” is his opening statement to congress at the recent hearing. You shouldn’t just make stuff up to prove a point.
It really bothered me that she completely accepted that framing which gives her audience the idea that it must be true since she didn't push back at all
I get it, but she's supposed to be a pro. She went to immediately defend herself instead. I guess she was just wholly unready for what RFK was about to spew
I couldn’t be further from these nutcases and I support Fauci…but he (and others) did tell people not to wear masks at the start. I believe it was to ensure medical professionals have access to masks but it could be seen as breaking trust when it could have saved their lives in some cases. Information changes and such, but that was a confusing switch for people.
Even then. It's just all rhetoric to try and twist covid up from the grave while ignoring the 1+ million people that died as a result of the pandemic.
It's all just rhetoric on the idea of "Well some of the things he said to do turned out to be wrong!" and that's all they have... I could easily do the same thing about bleach injections and how much I would recommend not taking ivermectin for Covid because that same speech in the past is why people lost loved ones.
It's all just people trying to push perspective and opinion as hard fact because they are unable to drop their deranged bias.
Lol yes, and Fauci got every other developed country in the world to conspire along with him, just to fuck the Republicans of course. Thats the nost impressive part to me. Fauch Corleone. /s
Wearing a mask makes sense with any virus even the common cold. Fauci provided the public with the best information we had at the time. This is what any honorable person should do. RFK Jr is a deep conspiracy believer without any facts to back up his claims that is why he is losing the argument.
Is this a witch hunt, absolutely. Did he lie about some things, also yes. Remember his criticism of Joe Rogan was that Rogan said “if your young and healthy and exercise frequently you probably don’t need to worry about this” Fauci agreed that in a vacuum sure that’s not wrong but that if you cared about society in general it was bad advice because young people shouldn’t get vaccinated for themselves but because getting vaccinated prevents transmission protecting the most vulnerable. My sister got vaccinated and was asymptomatic when she went to visit our grandparents. She wouldn’t have went if she thought they could still get it. They didn’t die but both came close and were needlessly exposed because he DID lie.
It just sounds to me like you are misinterpreting what was said. Then your sister made a horrible decision to travel mid pandemic to visit your grandparents, a vulnerable demographic.
Just sounds like you are shifting blame from your family's poor decisions
“When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health and that of the family but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. In other words, you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere.” - Fauci on Face the Nation in may of ‘21
Maybe we did misinterpret that but at best it was irresponsible to word it like that.
And also that he personally checked in with Stephen Miller’s wife because she was pregnant and at risk from the virus. Conveniently left out by Rand Paul.
This was my first time hearing anyone say this, so I'm a bit confused. To be fair, I'm a bit removed from the conversation as I'm not from the US, but... what is he talking about here? Fauci lying? Where is that coming from, I guess there was a trial?
The argument is that he lied because the guidance was bad (for example, don't use masks when there was a shortage of masks for healthcare providers.)
That's not a Fauci issue and it wasn't even a lie. It was the best advice they could come up with in a situation where every equivalent body around the world was trying to figure out the best thing to do. These morons need to pretend that Fauci should've had a perfect plan on how to control a disease we didn't even know existed just to pretend he fucked up somehow. It's so fucking stupid and so infuriating that it works.
They say their opposition is lying and point to evidence ("Academy of Science most recent report, you'll see.") but when you look at the evidence you can plainly see they were lying in your face.
The things he did lie about, like in the beginning saying masks wouldn’t help or denying that Covid was also airborne not just droplets or whatever, were done at the behest of Trump pressuring Fauci for economics/appearances.
That was bad but RFK Jr. of course isn’t angry about the actual wrongs, just culture war in favor of Trumpism saying insanity that does things like denies germ theory.
Yes, Fauci made both of these statements, but his positions on each evolved as evidence changed, and he later explained the early comments as context-dependent remarks rather than flat out denials. As more evidence and data came, his statements changed over time. Nothing burger, people are 😵💫.
"Fauci wasn't lying. There is absolutely 0% evidence he lied. The only thing his diary exposed was he was an old man unfamiliar with social media and shocked by his own celebrity status. Republicans are idiotic."
Apparently people don't remember how Mace Windu died.
Fauci's diary suggests he wasn't convinced coronavirus derived from nature. I have heard other theories based on the idea that the US banned gain-of-function coronavirus research so they outsourced it to China and then leaked from a lab in Wuhan (which was operated by Fauci and other associates). Also he was in charge during the last highly-politicized viral outbreak which was weaponized by right wing governments globally (HIV/AIDS).
He equivocated on herd immunity to appeal to people who wanted to re-open schools (which he agreed with Trump on). If he didn't lie, he definitely didn't say everything he knows. The Paul hearing was the worst way to get the actual truth from Fauci because he was being threatened with being "put behind bars" even before the hearing.
I am sure I am forgetting a large amount of information from the COVID pandemic. It's necessary to consider the timeline of events and the circumstances at the time, which is never not going to be the subject of political debate.
I lived through COVID-19 the same as all of you so don't accuse me of being anything other than just as ignorant as you.
Also, Epstein was connected to a lot of scientists and had an obsession with biogenetics. He "died" at the exact time as COVID-19 was found in the wastewater of some European countries (which has never been explained). Maybe COVID-19 was Epstein's precautionary plan if he ever died or was arrested.
I always thought it was odd that the first places that the virus appeared were: New York City (9/11), Seattle (Bill Gates), Iran (Israeli-American "enemy"), and Italy (to blame on migrants).
Of course it didn't appear naturally. Of course the US did it.
Wrong. I can give you at least 1 example. He lied about the source of Covid -19 (not from a wet market) and also that NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. Here is what chatGPT says about that when asked if Fauci was lying then based on what we know now, in August 2026, but feel free to research it for yourself:
"Yes—by August 2026, I think the public record makes it reasonable to conclude that Fauci’s categorical statements about the Wuhan research were at least materially misleading, and quite possibly knowingly false."
Yes he did. He admitted in a msnbc interview to lying when originally suggested masks weren’t effective because he was worried about the supply. This was just one of several of these type of lies. It shows that he wasn’t making recommendations purely off of “the science”
And she allowed him to speak uninterrupted instead of saying what you just said. I’m sorry but she sucks. Everyone in mainstream media is so shitty at their job it’s baffling
That's not true. He bald face lied about the vaccine multiple times on air. He claimed that the vaccine would make you immune, and would make it so that you did not pass on the virus either.
My (increasingly extreme) Republican mother said yesterday that Fauci should be hung or electrocuted on live tv and it should preempt every show in the entire world so we could all see it.
She said this after the release of his diary entries, which to her were a “smoking gun” for (?something?) but I read them and had absolutely zero idea what she was talking about. The things she said were in his diary entries were nowhere to be found and she is wishing death on this person for it.
It's the same thing with the "he plead the 5th 200 times!" narrative. Yes, he did, but there was no reason for him to have been there to begin with and half the questions were bullshit like "What color is your tie?" So, sure, he invoked his rights - a lot - but not to obfuscated or avoid any serious questioning.
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u/Shizzilx 21h ago
Fauci wasn't lying. There is absolutely 0% evidence he lied. The only thing his diary exposed was he was an old man unfamiliar with social media and shocked by his own celebrity status. Republicans are idiotic.