Senator Marco Rubio on Sunday accused U.S. top epidemiologist Anthony Fauci of lying about the effectiveness of the masks and misrepresenting the number of people who should be vaccinated in order for the US to obtain collective immunity against COVID-19.
“Dr. Fauci lied about masks in March[.] Dr. Fauci has distorted the level of vaccination needed for collective immunity, “said Rubio, R-Fla., In a tweet.” It’s not just him. Many in the elite bubbles believe that the American public doesn’t know ‘what’s good for them’, so they need to be tricked into ‘doing the right thing’. “
Rubio’s comment about vaccines was probably directed at an interview that Fauci gave the New York Times about public health officials “quietly changing” the percentage of the American public that they say should receive the vaccine to obtain “collective immunity”.
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“When the polls said that only half of all Americans would get the vaccine, I was saying that collective immunity would take 70 to 75%,” said Fauci, according to the newspaper. “So when more recent polls said 60% or more would accept, I thought, ‘I can increase this a little bit’, so I went to 80, 85.”
He continued: “We have to be a little humble here … We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90%. But, I won’t say 90%.”
The comment generated outrage against Fauci for not allying with the Americans.
“When you can’t just ‘trust science’ because scientists keep lying to you and saying, ‘oh, that was just a noble lie, sorry about that,'” said Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, about his reports of the paper.
“We have to realize that we have to be humble and understand what we don’t know. These are pure estimates,” Fauci said on Sunday in CNN’s “State of the Union” about the New York Times interview. “The calculations I did … it’s an interval … The reason I started saying 70-75 … it was really based on pure measles calculations and extrapolations.”
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Fauci also said that the increase of about 10% in what he said publicly is not very large. He went on to say “it’s a bit of that” when asked more directly if he weighs the research on what he says publicly, adding “I want to encourage the people of the United States and globally to get vaccinated”.
The other part of Rubio’s tweet was aimed at a complete reversal of public health recommendations on masks from the early stages of the pandemic, when there was not so much research on the virus and the United States faced a dire shortage of personal protective equipment.
Officials said an increase in supplies and evolving science – not lies – led to a change in mask recommendations.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams urged Americans in February to “STOP BUYING MASKS.” Months later, he, Fauci and other American public health officials said masks were the best way to stop the disease from spreading.
Adams, in a Coronavirus Task Force report at the White House in July, exposed what has changed.
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“Organizations and health professionals originally recommended against wearing masks by the general public because, based on the best evidence available at the time, it was not considered that this would have a significant impact on whether a health professional wearing a mask would contract COVID- 19. We always recommend that symptomatic people wear a mask, “said Adams.
He added: “What has changed in our recommendation? … Now we know from recent studies that a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus have no symptoms … And that even those who eventually become pre-symptomatic can transmit the virus to others before showing symptoms. “
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Rubio’s criticism of Fauci’s messages came days after he publicly took the coronavirus vaccine in an effort to instill confidence in the American public that the vaccine is safe.
“I know I looked away from the needle[.] And yes, I know I need a tan, “said Rubio in a tweet.” But I am so confident that the # Covid19 vaccine is safe and effective that I decided to take it myself. “
Vaccination of health care professionals and vulnerable elderly people continues in the last days of December, with vaccines increasingly available to more people. Fauci, on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, said he believed vaccines could be offered to the general public in late March or early April, leading to potentially “middle to end” collective immunity for the summer.
He said it would lead to a “return to some form of normalcy” with the fall.