Fauci on Shift on Masks from March: ‘You Can Always Second-Guess Yourself’ — ‘We Would Be Somewhat Better Off’ Had We Worn Masks Back Then

During Friday’s “America’s Newsroom” on Fox News Channel, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci discussed the change he has made from March to now on the importance of everyone wearing masks to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.

Early on, Fauci and other medical officials advised people, not in the medical field against wearing masks, but he said he now thinks the United States “would be somewhat better off” if everyone had been wearing masks from the beginning of the pandemic.

Fauci said, “I think this is sort of mischievous with this thing going around. I had my mask around my chin, I had taken it down. I was totally dehydrated and I was drinking water trying to rehydrate myself. And by the way, I was negative Covid literally the day before.”

“So I guess if people want to make a thing of that, I wear a mask all the time when I outside,” Fauci continued. “To pull it down, to take some sips of water, and put it back up again, I guess if people want to make something about that, they can. But to me, I think that’s just mischievous.”

“I think we would be somewhat better off if people were continually wearing masks back then, John, but you can always second-guess yourself and say what could have been or what should have been done,” Fauci explained. “At the time when we were told that there is a serious diminution in the availability of PPEs for the people who really need them back then, and also back then, we didn’t fully realize how significant the amount of asymptomatic infection was. And importantly, the fact that people who were asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic could transmit the virus, something we know for sure occurs right now.”

“So, the situation was different,” he continued. “I mean, you acted on the information you had at the time. I believe that in the context of that it was not unreasonable what was being done, but as you get more information, the way we have right now, there’s no question of what we should be doing, and that’s why everyone is uniformly recommending the use of masks.”

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