Dr. Anthony Fauci on Saturday said he’s worried Americans won’t listen to recommendations from the CDC on masking in the future, as the debate over Covid-19 mitigations has been reignited in recent weeks amid a rise in cases.
“I am concerned that people will not abide by recommendations,” Fauci said during an appearance on CNN. “I would hope that if we get to the point that the volume of cases is such and organizations like the CDC recommends — CDC does not mandate anything — recommends that people wear masks, I would hope that people abide by that recommendation and take into account the risks to themselves and their families.”
The former White House chief medical adviser went on to say a study from earlier this year that claimed masking is ineffective was misleading.
“When you’re talking about the effect on the pandemic as a whole, the data is less strong,” Fauci, who retired from his senior health post last year, said. “But when you talk about an individual basis of someone protecting themselves… There’s no doubt that there’s many studies that show that there is an advantage [to masks].”
The scientific review in February of 78 randomized trials studying the effectiveness of physical interventions in lessening the spread of respiratory viruses that found “little to no” evidence that large-scale masking efforts were effective at preventing the spread of Covid-19.
The review, published by Cochrane Library, found that the difference between wearing a regular surgical mask or not wearing a mask at all “may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness.” It also “probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test.”
Some experts pushed back against the review’s conclusion, suggesting the analysis overlooks the individual benefits of wearing masks, rather than community-wide benefits.
Fauci’s comments come as the CDC recorded a 19 percent increase in Covid hospitalization and an 18 percent increase in deaths in the last week.
Several public-health “experts” have taken to calling for a return to masking, despite the country having more tools to combat the virus than when it first began spreading widely in 2020.
“You should be wearing masks in crowded areas, especially during a surge,” University of Texas epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina told PBS Newshour this month. Jetelina went so far as to suggest people should even mask at home “if you want to reduce household transmission.”
Meanwhile, a number of companies, hospitals and colleges have recently reinstated mask policies.
Atlanta-based Morris Brown College has once again implemented some of its Covid-era restrictions, including mandatory masking indoors and out, save for staff who are “in their offices while alone,” social-distancing protocols, and an enforced proscription on social events. Hospitals associated with New York’s Syracuse University have have reimplemented masking provisions to preserve capacity.
The Hollywood studio Lionsgate reinstituted an involuntary masking and screening policy for its employees, though it was short-lived; the company retracted it amid national scrutiny and claimed it was only following the direction of the L.A. County Department of Health.
Fauci himself has been criticized for repeated flip-flopping on his support for vaccine mandates and the effectiveness of masks.
“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” he said in March 2020 before later switching positions. “When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask, and they keep touching their face.”
Fauci explained his initial hesitation on masks by saying that people in the public-health community were trying to preserve masks for front-line workers.
He later advocated for mask-wearing in schools despite concerns that long-term mask-wearing can cause physical and developmental issues in children and that there was little evidence to support a mandate.