Carl Zimmer

Don't worry about it.

Like, look, if we have a problem with masks, he said this and he recounted this later,

Look, if the health workers run out of masks, we just tell the public just to not use masks, and then we'll have enough for the health workers.

And Brian was like, that makes no sense.

That makes no sense.

And lo and behold, there was a shortage among American health workers, and China was having its own health shortage, so they weren't going to be helping us out, and it was chaos.

And so a lot of those messages about telling the public, don't wear a mask, was don't wear a mask.

The health care workers need them.

And we need to make sure they have enough.

And if you think about that, there's a problem there because like, yeah, fine.

Why don't the healthcare workers have their own independent supply of masks?

And then we can sort of address the question, do masks work in the general community?

Which is a legitimate scientific question.

I know there are people who say, oh, masks don't work.

There's plenty of studies that show that they can reduce risk.

But

Unfortunately, you actually had people like Fauci himself who were saying like, oh, you might see people wearing masks in other countries.

I wouldn't do it.

And then just a few weeks later, when it was really clear just how bad things were getting, he turns around.

and says people should wear masks.