“All governments lie.”
— I.F. “Izzy” Stone
[Editor’s Note: As of an online search late Sunday (6/21) none of the corporate media had reported on this issue, even though it came out on June 12. Given the public health risk from lack of mask wearing in much of the nation, it is an issue that needs to be fully reported. — Mark L. Taylor]
By Matt Novak
Gizmodo (6/13/20)
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been hailed as a hero during the coronavirus pandemic, delivering thoughtful health advice while most members of the Trump regime have spread misinformation about covid-19. But there’s one area where Fauci let America down, hindering the public health response and giving the U.S. both the highest coronavirus case count and the worst recorded death toll in the world. Simply put, Fauci lied about whether masks were helpful in slowing the spread of the virus.
Fauci was asked yesterday by financial news outlet The Street why the U.S. government didn’t promote masks early on during the pandemic. Fauci, who sits on the Trump regime’s zombie-like coronavirus task force, hinted that he knew masks worked, he just wanted any available masks to be saved for health care workers.
“Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N-95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci said. “And we wanted to make sure that the people, namely the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.”
When all is said and done, Fauci might be remembered as a folk hero, but he sure has a lot of blood on his hands. And none of this is anywhere close to done.
Fauci didn’t just fail to promote masks early on, he actively discouraged the use of masks, saying they didn’t work. Americans are now paying the price because too many people think masks are useless to combat the coronavirus. In reality, masks have been shown to help prevent the spread of covid-19, as the CDC now admits.
All we need to do is look at the things that Fauci was saying back in February—a time before most Americans were taking the threat of covid-19 seriously and people like Donald Trump were assuming it was just a problem for the Chinese government.
“There is no reason for anyone right now in the United States, with regard to coronavirus, to wear a mask,” Fauci told Spectrum News DC on February 14.
It was something that Fauci would say repeatedly whenever he gave interviews in February, as the pandemic spread to countries like Germany, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. And Fauci may not have known it yet, but coronavirus was also spreading quickly in the U.S. By the end of February, over 20 countries had identified the coronavirus within their borders.
Slow to warn of threat
Despite being remembered as level-headed during the early days of the crisis in the U.S., Fauci was incredibly slow to publicly recognize the threat from coronavirus. On February 17, he recalled stories of people asking whether it was safe to travel, ridiculing the idea that it might not be wise to get on a plane. But it was clear to anyone paying attention to news media outside of the U.S. that the coronavirus would soon be an international problem. …
- Dr. Fauci Dismisses Mask Use In March 8 ’60 Minutes’ Interview: Link To 1+-Minute Video
- Dr. Fauci Admits He LIED About Mask Safety! — Jimmy Dore Show (6/21/2020): 20-Minute Video
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2020. open source and free for non-derivative use with lik to www.thecommonercall.org )
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Daughter Speaks Out After Her Father Dies Of Covid-19: ‘It was preventable’
“You’re putting people like my dad at risk by not wearing a mask at the very least. A Covid-19 death happened to me & could happen to you. Wake up.”
By Laureen Gambino
The Guardian (6/21/22)
As her father lay dying in a hospital bed in Arizona, after testing positive for Covid-19, Lina Washington pleaded with him to keep fighting.
When they hung up, Washington scrolled through Instagram. She saw stories of friends and former classmates drinking and socializing at crowded bars and clubs, even as coronavirus infections rose exponentially across the state. Yet there they were, smiling, maskless, as if the threat had disappeared and life returned to normal.
Would they be so reckless, she wondered, if they knew that just a few miles away doctors and nurses were toiling around the clock to save her father’s life?
“People don’t think that it can happen to them,” Washington, a high school friend and classmate, told me during a phone interview this week. “And that carelessness, that hubris, that arrogance may have cost my dad his life.”
Robert Edward Washington Jr died on 11 June from complications related to the virus, less than a month after returning to work as a security guard at a tribal casino in Chandler. …
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Yes, Wearing Masks Helps A Lot. Here’s Why
There’s enough evidence already to say that, combined with measures like social distancing, masks really do help.
By Maria Godoy
NPR (6/21/20)
Mask wearing has become a topic of fierce debate in the United States.
People opposed to mask mandates have staged protests, and one local health official in Orange County, Calif., quit her job after receiving a death threat for a mask order. Not long after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered Californians to wear face coverings in public.
Meanwhile in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott recently allowed some counties to impose mask mandates on businesses, despite an earlier order forbidding penalties on individuals for not wearing masks.
While politicians spar over the topic, a growing number of scientific studies support the idea that masks are a critical tool in curbing the spread of the coronavirus.
Take, for example, a meta-analysis of 172 studies that looked at various interventions to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, SARS and MERS from an infected person to people close to them. The analysis, which was published in The Lancet on June 1, found that mask wearing significantly reduces the risk of viral transmission. …