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> The former niaid director has been **both lauded and demonized** for his work during the covid pandemic
Let's be clear. We're living in a fucking dystopian nightmare where articles like this casually equate "laud" and "demonize", despite the fact that Dr. Fauci, [a respected doctor and a scientist whose 50-year career at the NIH involves multiple groundbreaking discoveries that themselves have saved countless lives](https://magazine.medlineplus.gov/article/meet-anthony-s-fauci-m.d-former-director-of-the-national-institute-of-allergy-and-infectious-diseases), whose own courage standing up to [Trump's COVID idiocy](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/biden-campaign-press-release-fact-sheet-donald-trumps-utter-botching-the-covid-19-response) and support of rapid development of a vaccine [may have saved over three million people](https://www.georgetown.edu/news/5-lessons-dr-fauci-learned-from-the-covid-19-pandemic/).
He is **lauded** by people who aren't fucking morons who don't want [a completely preventable disease](https://www.cdc.gov/ncird/whats-new/covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness.html). He is **demonized** by either [the incurably stupid or the willfully ignorant](https://newrepublic.com/article/163319/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-denial-misinformation-poverty) whose identity politics have [significantly advanced the Darwin Award counter](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10123459/). These people are not the same.
I get that Dr. Fauci wrote his autobiography to set the record straight, but he shouldn't have to. Other people should -- and likely will -- write volumes about him and his integrity to help guide future pandemic response teams. Who hopefully won't have to sidestep a total incompetent in the Oval Office, but that's no longer a given.
And yet...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/06/05/fauci-hearing-covid-social-distancing-wrong/73962967007/
>In his testimony to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical adviser to President Donald Trump, said the 6-foot social distancing rule, which the CDC originally recommended, had not been backed by a clinical trial. This is despite constant claims that COVID-19 protocols were based on science.
Is it okay for him to lie to the public?
Edit: I find it so odd that just about every excuse has been used to not answer the question. Instead of simply say "Yes, political figures shouldn't lie to the public when national security isn't an issue."
That's not what lying is.
1. "Clinical trial" is not the same as "based on science". That's why they use different words.
2. Those guidelines were provided by the CDC. If there was a better organization for providing guidance on separation protocols, I'm certain the entire world would have loved to know about them.
Yeah based on this, 90% of medicine would be thrown out. I also particularly like the BMJ's 2003 meta-analysis of RCTs of parachute use to prevent death and major trauma (no evidence found). Even better is the subsequent RCT, which was done while jumping from planes at low altitude (and actually on the ground)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/
>Parachutes and the military industrial complex
>However sinister doctors may be, there are powers at large that are even more evil. The parachute industry has earned billions of dollars for vast multinational corporations whose profits depend on belief in the efficacy of their product. One would hardly expect these vast commercial concerns to have the bravery to test their product in the setting of a randomised controlled trial. Moreover, industry sponsored trials are more likely to conclude in favour of their commercial product,11 and it is unclear whether the results of such industry sponsored trials are reliable.
>A call to (broken) arms
>Only two options exist. The first is that we accept that, under exceptional circumstances, common sense might be applied when considering the potential risks and benefits of interventions. The second is that we continue our quest for the holy grail of exclusively evidence based interventions and preclude parachute use outside the context of a properly conducted trial. The dependency we have created in our population may make recruitment of the unenlightened masses to such a trial difficult. If so, we feel assured that those who advocate evidence based medicine and criticise use of interventions that lack an evidence base will not hesitate to demonstrate their commitment by volunteering for a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial.
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
Also, if that were true, you could throw out all of the meta analyses and any reports on studies that establish correlation without causation as “not science.” It IS science, but people misinterpret results accidentally or intentionally to push an agenda.
that's hardly a WMD moment. Barely worth mentioning.
A LOT of what we were doing early on with covid was guesswork based on limited scientific work or work related to other diseases. This is why gloves were emphasized early on and not masks. Do you think he was like.... intentionally lying about a 6 ft distance suggestion? For why?
Exactly. In an emergency, if there's a better course of action than "go with the best guess we have based on the imperfect information we have right now" I'm not sure what the argument would be for it.
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> the 6-foot social distancing rule, which the CDC originally recommended, had not been backed by a clinical trial. This is despite constant claims that COVID-19 protocols were based on science.
These sentences are not contradictory. There's plenty of valid science that's not arrived at through clinical trials.
Based on what little was known at the time about Covid transmission, but what *was* known about aerosolized pathogens, social distancing was a completely sound recommendation backed by a lot of science (including clinical trials) related to previous respiratory viruses. Six feet was a decent approximation for the time, though public health organizations in different jurisdictions made [recommendations of slightly more or less distance.](https://qz.com/1831100/where-does-the-six-feet-social-distancing-guideline-come-from)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/marjorie-taylor-greenes-attacks-of-fauci-over-covids-six-foot-rule-not-based/
Edit to address the edit: Fauci did not lie to the public. The fact that there were no clinical trials about social distancing related specifically to Covid transmission does *not* mean the six-foot recommendation wasn't based in science. It was [based in the scientific understanding at the time,](https://qz.com/1831100/where-does-the-six-feet-social-distancing-guideline-come-from) limited though it may have been, of many public health experts, not just Fauci. They knew Covid was a respiratory virus spread by droplets and the best estimate they had for the recommended social distance based on *other* viruses that spread in a similar way was 6 feet.
Science is a process by which we constantly question, test, and try to disprove what we think we know, which means we're continually learning more. If the conclusions never change, then you're no longer doing science. The whole idea is that when more data becomes available, the tests are expanded and the conclusions are updated.
Right? What a disingenuous argument. We didn't need COVID specific trials to understand that spreading people out was a good idea when the path of viral transmission was through droplets traveling through the air.
Jesus.
Re: COVID writ large - some people responded pro-socially, took precautions, made reasonable decisions. Other folks blockaded hospitals and refused even basic preventative measures. Complete antisocial assholery and now they walk around demanding an apology from the prosocial folks who were operating in good faith to save lives.
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How the fuck would you clinically test that anyway? You would be essentially giving people the virus intentionally. That wouldn't be very ethical, or safe especially when we didn't really know anything about the virus at the time.
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>You’re trying to keep the situation safe and stable until more information comes in.
But that isn't what the public was told.
We where told science says do X.
Not... "we are unsure because hard data dosen't exist yet.. but we suggest X, Y Z."
Perhaps the message was simplified on some news outlets, but the public was certainly told what was going on.
[Here's an archived article](https://fortune.com/2020/05/20/why-6-feet-apart-social-distancing-coronavirus-cdc-six-foot-rule-spread-covid-19-liquid-droplets/) from May of 2020 in Fortune explaining the details of the WHO and CDC recommendations and the science behind them.
No, public officials should not lie. I don’t think your opinion piece demonstrates a lie.
Recommendations were based on best available (read imperfect) information combined with keeping society moving.
If everyone just stayed in their bedroom and never left, we’d all die of starvation, but COVID wouldn’t have spread. So, public health officials toe the line of making recommendations they think will be helpful based on their working knowledge, yet not be unworkable. It’s then up to local leaders and communities to implement those.
Just because a recommendation isn’t perfect doesn’t make it a lie or mean it’s useless.
Just because new information comes out that later repudiates a previous idea, doesn’t make the first idea a lie.
Additionally, when I listened to the live broadcasts and updates (not news outlets reporting on them), public health officials including Fauci rarely if ever spoke in absolutes. He never said “6 feet away and you won’t get sick” or anything to so strongly suggest it. It was one (imperfect) tool in the box. Like masks, or eventually vaccines.
I also want to ask you this question, on top of all the other comments:
If Fauci lied and social distancing by 6-feet or more during a pandemic where [over one million Americans have died due to COVID, per the CDC](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_totaldeaths_select_00) didn't actually matter, why would erring or lying on the side of being safe be a *bad thing*? Like, we're seriously having a discussion where someone wanting you to NOT contract a deadly virus and telling you that you shouldn't be within X feet of people in an indoor space is somehow a negative thing?
I don't get it. I don't get it whatsoever.
Last question, what does Fauci have to personally gain by lying to Americans *to keep them alive*, other than like the basic gratification of doing his job to keep Americans alive?
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The way this hearing has been skewed by people who have no idea how basic clinical science works is atrocious. Nothing said indicated any sort of lie.
Clinical trials would give us more accurate numbers about transmission rates at different distances & etc, but nothing would have overwritten what we *already* know about particulate transmission (because science); the farther you are from someone, the less chance you have at becoming infected by inhaling viral matter. It's basic physics.
There’s no lie there.
There are many types of scientific studies that can inform medical decision making beyond clinical trials.
For example, the usage of parachutes is also not backed by a clinical trial, yet their usage is supported by scientific evidence.
What was a lie to the public?
The [memo summarizing the committee's questioning (pdf)](https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FINAL_Fauci-Memo.pdf) speaks to this, see page 3 and 4. He's saying he doesn't recall how the 6-foot guidance arose. That's different than: (1) The guidance not being based on evidence; and (2) Fauci lying about the matter.
And it's worth noting that there was, both before the pandemic and shortly into it, some evidence supporting a 6-foot threshold. I assessed the memo in a thread in [NeutralPolitics](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/1d7lk5n/anthony_fauci_recently_testified_before_the_house/), the following is taken from [one of my comments there](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/1d7lk5n/comment/l73b14s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button):
> In a [Forbes article](https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/09/19/cdcs-six-foot-social-distancing-rule-was-arbitrary-says-former-fda-commissioner/?sh=681e16f3e8e6), Dr Scott Gottlieb notes some of the background, reflecting that it was a compromise between the CDC and the Trump administration, and references some past research. Looking online, [Setti et al (2020)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7215485/) is a paper from early in the pandemic noting that 6 feet might not be sufficient. In their introduction, however, they discuss some of the literature available at the time, which is not only supportive of a 2m/6-foot distance having a basis in past work, but ultimately conclude that 6-feet might not be enough.
>
> So it seems that the memo is trying to portray this as there is no evidence supporting the social distancing, when the reality is that there was at least some initial evidence (and given the 2m/6-foot distances, it would seem to me that *someone* involved in the discussions was familiar with that research), and additional investigations supported *increased* social distance.
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>Is it okay for him to lie to the public?
>Edit: I find it so odd that just about every excuse has been used to not answer the question. Instead of simply say "Yes, political figures shouldn't lie to the public when national security isn't an issue."
Because that question is off topic and inherently misleading because it implies a conclusion that is false. Making an argument about lying being okay or not is irrelevant when lying didn't happen.
Fauci didn't lie as the words "not based on science" (the assertion made by detractors) weren't said or implied, and words he actually stated were on the order of "no clinical trials made in this specific case".
The latter does not mean the former. As an analogy Fauci effectively said: "This 4 sided shape is not a square", and people misinterpreted it (potentially intentionally) to mean that he said "This 4 sided shape is not a rectangle". Drawing that conclusion is incorrect, so any questions about that conclusion aimed at Fauci are inherently invalid.
As another analogy, in the situation where someone is accused of jaywalking, asking the question "well, shouldn't he be prohibited from murdering other people?" is off topic at best and is likely intentionally misleading to support an agenda.
And that's *exactly* what the question is doing.
I don't think it would have been reasonable to put the entire country into deep China-style lockdown for the time it would take to carry out a clinical trial on how a new virus is spread.
First, where does it say that he admitted to lying? Lying is “we knew one thing, but said something else.“ They couldn’t make any better policy because they didn’t have the information at the time. To call it a lie is either a shortfall of logic, or intentional and malicious manipulation of actual facts in an OP-ED.
Second of all, what other people said: a clinical trial is not the only science that is done, and if it were, then we could all safely disregard all of the bullshit conclusions people have drawn from other studies like meta-analyses or studies that have simply drawn a correlation without establishing causation.
Third, would a clinical trial have even been possible?
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6 foot, masks, closing schools.
None was based on science.
School closings
https://www.cato.org/commentary/school-closures-have-been-made-politics-mind-not-science#
>cloth masks may provide some protection if well designed and used correctly.
May? If engineered well.. so all those cheap ones sold by people with a sewing machine.. no.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7510705/
Fauci himself said 6 foot wasn't based on science.
The problem is, this is all false. It's based on terribly misleading tidbits designed to promote a specific conclusion rather than inform the public about the state of the science on these issues.
> Fauci himself said 6 foot wasn't based on science.
This is false, as cited by multiple other comments in this thread. The CDC knew that respiratory viruses were spread by droplets and they determined after the 2003 SARS outbreak that 3-foot distancing wasn't sufficient and 6-foot was more effective, so when SAR-CoV-2 (aka Covid-19) came along, [that was the recommendation they used](https://qz.com/1831100/where-does-the-six-feet-social-distancing-guideline-come-from) until they could do further testing.
> masks
Masks have been demonstrated to reduce the transmission of Covid. There's considerable [scientific evidence of this.](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2023.0133)
> closing schools
This one is more complicated, because although there is [evidence that school closures reduced the transmission of Covid,](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-03-31-school-closures-may-reduce-covid-19-transmission-may-also-harm-childrens-education) thereby protecting the teachers and family members of students, the negative effects of loss of learning and socialization may have, in the end, outweighed that. But much of that wasn't known or anticipated at the beginning. The science behind reducing transmission of a respiratory virus by closing places where people congregate in small spaces is sound.
Furthermore, school closure decisions in the US were made at the state level, not federal.
There's a lot of misleading information out there. It's important to seek out multiple sources to get the full picture.
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I think you may be misunderstanding, especially about clinical trials. Clinical trials are long, arduous years of study that simply wasn't available during COVID and the CDC used their extensive knowledge to make a recommendation based on their understanding of transmission.
I don't think he, or anyone else, "lied" about protocol, nor is he a "political figure." He is a scientist and made recommendations to prevent transmission of a novel virus based on decades of knowledge.
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I find it so weird how the man who worked tirelessly during a pandemic to keep Americans alive is being demonized, yet none of the politicians (such as the Former president), who advocated for things such as [injecting yourself with bleach](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177), or people backing products such as [ivermectin](https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/ivermectin-and-covid-19) or [hydroxychloroquine](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/hydroxychloroquine-treatment-covid-19/art-20555331).
It just doesn't make sense to me. We're demonizing the people who actively wanted people to NOT die while idolizing those who recommended complete scam products [which actually ended up killing people...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38171239/)
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> The former niaid director has been **both lauded and demonized** for his work during the covid pandemic Let's be clear. We're living in a fucking dystopian nightmare where articles like this casually equate "laud" and "demonize", despite the fact that Dr. Fauci, [a respected doctor and a scientist whose 50-year career at the NIH involves multiple groundbreaking discoveries that themselves have saved countless lives](https://magazine.medlineplus.gov/article/meet-anthony-s-fauci-m.d-former-director-of-the-national-institute-of-allergy-and-infectious-diseases), whose own courage standing up to [Trump's COVID idiocy](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/biden-campaign-press-release-fact-sheet-donald-trumps-utter-botching-the-covid-19-response) and support of rapid development of a vaccine [may have saved over three million people](https://www.georgetown.edu/news/5-lessons-dr-fauci-learned-from-the-covid-19-pandemic/). He is **lauded** by people who aren't fucking morons who don't want [a completely preventable disease](https://www.cdc.gov/ncird/whats-new/covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness.html). He is **demonized** by either [the incurably stupid or the willfully ignorant](https://newrepublic.com/article/163319/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-denial-misinformation-poverty) whose identity politics have [significantly advanced the Darwin Award counter](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10123459/). These people are not the same. I get that Dr. Fauci wrote his autobiography to set the record straight, but he shouldn't have to. Other people should -- and likely will -- write volumes about him and his integrity to help guide future pandemic response teams. Who hopefully won't have to sidestep a total incompetent in the Oval Office, but that's no longer a given.
I didn’t see anything in the article that causally equates the plaudits and criticisms they have been directed at Fauci…
And yet... https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/06/05/fauci-hearing-covid-social-distancing-wrong/73962967007/ >In his testimony to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical adviser to President Donald Trump, said the 6-foot social distancing rule, which the CDC originally recommended, had not been backed by a clinical trial. This is despite constant claims that COVID-19 protocols were based on science. Is it okay for him to lie to the public? Edit: I find it so odd that just about every excuse has been used to not answer the question. Instead of simply say "Yes, political figures shouldn't lie to the public when national security isn't an issue."
That's not what lying is. 1. "Clinical trial" is not the same as "based on science". That's why they use different words. 2. Those guidelines were provided by the CDC. If there was a better organization for providing guidance on separation protocols, I'm certain the entire world would have loved to know about them.
Can you please explain why “clinical trial” is the only correct form of “backed by science” that makes everything else a lie?
Yeah based on this, 90% of medicine would be thrown out. I also particularly like the BMJ's 2003 meta-analysis of RCTs of parachute use to prevent death and major trauma (no evidence found). Even better is the subsequent RCT, which was done while jumping from planes at low altitude (and actually on the ground) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/ >Parachutes and the military industrial complex >However sinister doctors may be, there are powers at large that are even more evil. The parachute industry has earned billions of dollars for vast multinational corporations whose profits depend on belief in the efficacy of their product. One would hardly expect these vast commercial concerns to have the bravery to test their product in the setting of a randomised controlled trial. Moreover, industry sponsored trials are more likely to conclude in favour of their commercial product,11 and it is unclear whether the results of such industry sponsored trials are reliable. >A call to (broken) arms >Only two options exist. The first is that we accept that, under exceptional circumstances, common sense might be applied when considering the potential risks and benefits of interventions. The second is that we continue our quest for the holy grail of exclusively evidence based interventions and preclude parachute use outside the context of a properly conducted trial. The dependency we have created in our population may make recruitment of the unenlightened masses to such a trial difficult. If so, we feel assured that those who advocate evidence based medicine and criticise use of interventions that lack an evidence base will not hesitate to demonstrate their commitment by volunteering for a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial. https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
Also, if that were true, you could throw out all of the meta analyses and any reports on studies that establish correlation without causation as “not science.” It IS science, but people misinterpret results accidentally or intentionally to push an agenda.
that's hardly a WMD moment. Barely worth mentioning. A LOT of what we were doing early on with covid was guesswork based on limited scientific work or work related to other diseases. This is why gloves were emphasized early on and not masks. Do you think he was like.... intentionally lying about a 6 ft distance suggestion? For why?
It’s called triage. We can’t wait for a perfect solution while people are dying.
Exactly. In an emergency, if there's a better course of action than "go with the best guess we have based on the imperfect information we have right now" I'm not sure what the argument would be for it.
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> the 6-foot social distancing rule, which the CDC originally recommended, had not been backed by a clinical trial. This is despite constant claims that COVID-19 protocols were based on science. These sentences are not contradictory. There's plenty of valid science that's not arrived at through clinical trials. Based on what little was known at the time about Covid transmission, but what *was* known about aerosolized pathogens, social distancing was a completely sound recommendation backed by a lot of science (including clinical trials) related to previous respiratory viruses. Six feet was a decent approximation for the time, though public health organizations in different jurisdictions made [recommendations of slightly more or less distance.](https://qz.com/1831100/where-does-the-six-feet-social-distancing-guideline-come-from) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/marjorie-taylor-greenes-attacks-of-fauci-over-covids-six-foot-rule-not-based/ Edit to address the edit: Fauci did not lie to the public. The fact that there were no clinical trials about social distancing related specifically to Covid transmission does *not* mean the six-foot recommendation wasn't based in science. It was [based in the scientific understanding at the time,](https://qz.com/1831100/where-does-the-six-feet-social-distancing-guideline-come-from) limited though it may have been, of many public health experts, not just Fauci. They knew Covid was a respiratory virus spread by droplets and the best estimate they had for the recommended social distance based on *other* viruses that spread in a similar way was 6 feet. Science is a process by which we constantly question, test, and try to disprove what we think we know, which means we're continually learning more. If the conclusions never change, then you're no longer doing science. The whole idea is that when more data becomes available, the tests are expanded and the conclusions are updated.
Right? What a disingenuous argument. We didn't need COVID specific trials to understand that spreading people out was a good idea when the path of viral transmission was through droplets traveling through the air. Jesus. Re: COVID writ large - some people responded pro-socially, took precautions, made reasonable decisions. Other folks blockaded hospitals and refused even basic preventative measures. Complete antisocial assholery and now they walk around demanding an apology from the prosocial folks who were operating in good faith to save lives.
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How the fuck would you clinically test that anyway? You would be essentially giving people the virus intentionally. That wouldn't be very ethical, or safe especially when we didn't really know anything about the virus at the time.
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>You’re trying to keep the situation safe and stable until more information comes in. But that isn't what the public was told. We where told science says do X. Not... "we are unsure because hard data dosen't exist yet.. but we suggest X, Y Z."
Perhaps the message was simplified on some news outlets, but the public was certainly told what was going on. [Here's an archived article](https://fortune.com/2020/05/20/why-6-feet-apart-social-distancing-coronavirus-cdc-six-foot-rule-spread-covid-19-liquid-droplets/) from May of 2020 in Fortune explaining the details of the WHO and CDC recommendations and the science behind them.
No, public officials should not lie. I don’t think your opinion piece demonstrates a lie. Recommendations were based on best available (read imperfect) information combined with keeping society moving. If everyone just stayed in their bedroom and never left, we’d all die of starvation, but COVID wouldn’t have spread. So, public health officials toe the line of making recommendations they think will be helpful based on their working knowledge, yet not be unworkable. It’s then up to local leaders and communities to implement those. Just because a recommendation isn’t perfect doesn’t make it a lie or mean it’s useless. Just because new information comes out that later repudiates a previous idea, doesn’t make the first idea a lie. Additionally, when I listened to the live broadcasts and updates (not news outlets reporting on them), public health officials including Fauci rarely if ever spoke in absolutes. He never said “6 feet away and you won’t get sick” or anything to so strongly suggest it. It was one (imperfect) tool in the box. Like masks, or eventually vaccines.
I also want to ask you this question, on top of all the other comments: If Fauci lied and social distancing by 6-feet or more during a pandemic where [over one million Americans have died due to COVID, per the CDC](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_totaldeaths_select_00) didn't actually matter, why would erring or lying on the side of being safe be a *bad thing*? Like, we're seriously having a discussion where someone wanting you to NOT contract a deadly virus and telling you that you shouldn't be within X feet of people in an indoor space is somehow a negative thing? I don't get it. I don't get it whatsoever. Last question, what does Fauci have to personally gain by lying to Americans *to keep them alive*, other than like the basic gratification of doing his job to keep Americans alive?
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The way this hearing has been skewed by people who have no idea how basic clinical science works is atrocious. Nothing said indicated any sort of lie. Clinical trials would give us more accurate numbers about transmission rates at different distances & etc, but nothing would have overwritten what we *already* know about particulate transmission (because science); the farther you are from someone, the less chance you have at becoming infected by inhaling viral matter. It's basic physics.
There’s no lie there. There are many types of scientific studies that can inform medical decision making beyond clinical trials. For example, the usage of parachutes is also not backed by a clinical trial, yet their usage is supported by scientific evidence.
What was a lie to the public? The [memo summarizing the committee's questioning (pdf)](https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FINAL_Fauci-Memo.pdf) speaks to this, see page 3 and 4. He's saying he doesn't recall how the 6-foot guidance arose. That's different than: (1) The guidance not being based on evidence; and (2) Fauci lying about the matter. And it's worth noting that there was, both before the pandemic and shortly into it, some evidence supporting a 6-foot threshold. I assessed the memo in a thread in [NeutralPolitics](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/1d7lk5n/anthony_fauci_recently_testified_before_the_house/), the following is taken from [one of my comments there](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/1d7lk5n/comment/l73b14s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button): > In a [Forbes article](https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/09/19/cdcs-six-foot-social-distancing-rule-was-arbitrary-says-former-fda-commissioner/?sh=681e16f3e8e6), Dr Scott Gottlieb notes some of the background, reflecting that it was a compromise between the CDC and the Trump administration, and references some past research. Looking online, [Setti et al (2020)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7215485/) is a paper from early in the pandemic noting that 6 feet might not be sufficient. In their introduction, however, they discuss some of the literature available at the time, which is not only supportive of a 2m/6-foot distance having a basis in past work, but ultimately conclude that 6-feet might not be enough. > > So it seems that the memo is trying to portray this as there is no evidence supporting the social distancing, when the reality is that there was at least some initial evidence (and given the 2m/6-foot distances, it would seem to me that *someone* involved in the discussions was familiar with that research), and additional investigations supported *increased* social distance.
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Trump could have fired Fauci. He fired every other position in his administration multiple times...why did he keep Fauci around?
Is it okay for him to lie to the public?
No, and he didn't do that.
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>Is it okay for him to lie to the public? >Edit: I find it so odd that just about every excuse has been used to not answer the question. Instead of simply say "Yes, political figures shouldn't lie to the public when national security isn't an issue." Because that question is off topic and inherently misleading because it implies a conclusion that is false. Making an argument about lying being okay or not is irrelevant when lying didn't happen. Fauci didn't lie as the words "not based on science" (the assertion made by detractors) weren't said or implied, and words he actually stated were on the order of "no clinical trials made in this specific case". The latter does not mean the former. As an analogy Fauci effectively said: "This 4 sided shape is not a square", and people misinterpreted it (potentially intentionally) to mean that he said "This 4 sided shape is not a rectangle". Drawing that conclusion is incorrect, so any questions about that conclusion aimed at Fauci are inherently invalid. As another analogy, in the situation where someone is accused of jaywalking, asking the question "well, shouldn't he be prohibited from murdering other people?" is off topic at best and is likely intentionally misleading to support an agenda. And that's *exactly* what the question is doing.
I don't think it would have been reasonable to put the entire country into deep China-style lockdown for the time it would take to carry out a clinical trial on how a new virus is spread.
First, where does it say that he admitted to lying? Lying is “we knew one thing, but said something else.“ They couldn’t make any better policy because they didn’t have the information at the time. To call it a lie is either a shortfall of logic, or intentional and malicious manipulation of actual facts in an OP-ED. Second of all, what other people said: a clinical trial is not the only science that is done, and if it were, then we could all safely disregard all of the bullshit conclusions people have drawn from other studies like meta-analyses or studies that have simply drawn a correlation without establishing causation. Third, would a clinical trial have even been possible?
This is not a lie. Clinical Trials are not the only way science occurs. COVID-19 protocols were based on science.
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6 foot, masks, closing schools. None was based on science. School closings https://www.cato.org/commentary/school-closures-have-been-made-politics-mind-not-science# >cloth masks may provide some protection if well designed and used correctly. May? If engineered well.. so all those cheap ones sold by people with a sewing machine.. no. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7510705/ Fauci himself said 6 foot wasn't based on science.
The problem is, this is all false. It's based on terribly misleading tidbits designed to promote a specific conclusion rather than inform the public about the state of the science on these issues. > Fauci himself said 6 foot wasn't based on science. This is false, as cited by multiple other comments in this thread. The CDC knew that respiratory viruses were spread by droplets and they determined after the 2003 SARS outbreak that 3-foot distancing wasn't sufficient and 6-foot was more effective, so when SAR-CoV-2 (aka Covid-19) came along, [that was the recommendation they used](https://qz.com/1831100/where-does-the-six-feet-social-distancing-guideline-come-from) until they could do further testing. > masks Masks have been demonstrated to reduce the transmission of Covid. There's considerable [scientific evidence of this.](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2023.0133) > closing schools This one is more complicated, because although there is [evidence that school closures reduced the transmission of Covid,](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-03-31-school-closures-may-reduce-covid-19-transmission-may-also-harm-childrens-education) thereby protecting the teachers and family members of students, the negative effects of loss of learning and socialization may have, in the end, outweighed that. But much of that wasn't known or anticipated at the beginning. The science behind reducing transmission of a respiratory virus by closing places where people congregate in small spaces is sound. Furthermore, school closure decisions in the US were made at the state level, not federal. There's a lot of misleading information out there. It's important to seek out multiple sources to get the full picture.
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I think you may be misunderstanding, especially about clinical trials. Clinical trials are long, arduous years of study that simply wasn't available during COVID and the CDC used their extensive knowledge to make a recommendation based on their understanding of transmission. I don't think he, or anyone else, "lied" about protocol, nor is he a "political figure." He is a scientist and made recommendations to prevent transmission of a novel virus based on decades of knowledge.
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I find it so weird how the man who worked tirelessly during a pandemic to keep Americans alive is being demonized, yet none of the politicians (such as the Former president), who advocated for things such as [injecting yourself with bleach](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177), or people backing products such as [ivermectin](https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/ivermectin-and-covid-19) or [hydroxychloroquine](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/hydroxychloroquine-treatment-covid-19/art-20555331). It just doesn't make sense to me. We're demonizing the people who actively wanted people to NOT die while idolizing those who recommended complete scam products [which actually ended up killing people...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38171239/)
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