It was damaging. Saying Jerome Adams saying "masks don't work" and then Antony Fauci coming out and saying they said that because they wanted to keep masks for healthcare workers was honestly a bad deal. That kind of lie to the public was not going to go over well.
That I can agree with, but part of their job is panic control. Just like anytime you hear the gov talk about radiation.
On my part, I didn’t need anyone to tell me how various masks do or do not work. They all have certifications one can read on their own.
But, that mask messaging was bad. I suppose the alternative was, yes masks work, but we don’t enough have for you. Apparently we are not adult enough to hear that type of thing. And, I mean we’re not.
The real truth is “masks work and our current reuse recommendations were made in peacetime so we waste them causing us to not have enough if everyone were to buy them”. On this very site people were saying you “can’t wear an N95 mask without training”.
The fact of the matter is that such dishonesty makes one untrustworthy. It was clear that everyone landed in political lines here. The right answer is to not lie. “You can’t handle the truth” is nice in a movie but we’re in real life and if you say that to me you shouldn’t be surprised if the next time you say something I think that you’re lying again.
Public officials made a bunch of errors and could have communicated better.
But if the bar is that public officials must communicate flawlessly during an emergency situation and have it so all of their recommendations end up being the correct ones once we have complete information then there's no possible hope. People point at the changing guidance as evidence of a conspiracy when public health officials were learning new things every day.
Things changing is fine. Intentionally deceiving is not fine. Would you want your doctor telling you that some surgery doesn’t work because he needs the operating room for someone else?
Things changing is obviously not fine given the huge amount of complaints people have made about changing public health advice during covid that was motivated entirely by new research.
The huge amount of complaints was because the changing health advice was being provided by the exact same people who were doing the lying. If they lie about some things and change their minds about other things, it makes them untrustworthy about all things and the times they changed their mind is not obviously in good faith.
No. Documented by the critics. You can read it in their books. You can read it in their posts. The criticism does not flow from what you describe above.
Fauci also lied about herd immunity estimates to increase vaccination rates.
> When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent ... 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 .... 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.
The intention doesn't really matter; you can't admit to lying for policy purposes, then wonder why people stopped trusting the government.
When they were busy arresting people for not wearing masks, kids not wearing marks and not social distancing while Fauci's family was gallivanting around without masks and attending public functions...yes it was a big problem, lol. Most of the rules were proven unscientific as Fauci himself admitted later in senate hearing.
Are you seriously asking this in good faith ? There are dozens of cases of people who were arrested. Please do your own research. It will barely take you ~10 mins.
East Harlem - poor district - no health officials only harsh police enforcement, >20 people arrested.
Lots of arrests in Manhattan for social distancing. Even taking video of the arrests got you arrested
We can go on and on...but seriously do people have such terrible short term memory that all the arrests, business closures and police abuse are already forgotten ?
I looked through these articles and also did a bit more reading.
In multiple cases, the individual was given the opportunity to comply with the law (or request, in the case of a private business), refused, and then was arrested for trespassing when they were asked to leave. That's actually different from "Arrested for not wearing a mask".
In one article, the women who refused to wear the mask threatened to cough on people.
In another case, the lawsuit was thrown out by the judge; the individual who was arrested was actually given the opportunity to vote (in a no-mask area), but refused and then was asked to leave, then arrested for trespassing.
There certainly were rights violations, and unnecessary violence/arrests by law enforcement officials. I'm not excusing those, but I will observe that it's challenging to uphold the law in a rapidly changing medical emergency.
Out of those incidents, what %age was due to not wearing a mask vs the person in question acting out of control when asked to follow whatever rules were in place?
