Fauci is going back to his ORIGINAL STATEMENTS that masks are largely ineffective with Covid. Then he changed his tune and said you MUST wear a mask. Then it was one mask wasn't enough, you have to wear TWO masks. All that did was create division, anger and stress among the people which was the real goal for mask mandates.
Here is the actually quote in the April 2023 interview of Facci by David Wallace Wells
“From a broad public-health standpoint, at the population level, masks work at the margins — maybe 10 percent. But for an individual who religiously wears a mask, a well-fitted KN95 or N95, it’s not at the margin. It really does work. But I think anything that instigated or intensified the culture wars just made things worse. And I have to be honest with you, David, when it comes to masking, I don’t know.”
The New York Times published a piece containing startling admissions, claims, and defenses from Anthony Fauci
brownstone.org
There two ways to look the effectiveness
1. In the lab - Facci, being a scientist looked at the scientific evidence and it showed that N95 masks worked very well. Surgical mask provide a good deal of protection, but the protection does not last long so they have to be changed often. Cloth masks manufactured to the CDC recommendations provided good protection. From a scientist standpoint, the country should have been wearing masks.
2. Use by the public - Facci did not consider the fact that wearing masks would become a political issue. First, Trump refused to wear a mask and made negative comments. Governors and mayors in red states followed Trump's lead. Since masks were inconvenient and often not that comfortable, the pollical expedient thing to do was to make mask wearing a personal choice. In a few states there were strong mask requirements and other states wearing masks was an option and in some places it was illegible. Trump refused to mandate mask wearing. Legal issues kept the CDC from mandating that cloth masks be manufacture to their specification.
So where masks could have saved lots of lives, the nation chose to follow the politics and their personal preferences. The result was the nation believed to be the most advanced in public health, had an astounding number of over a million dead. So yes, effectiveness of masks as low as 10% in use in the country was probably about right. Not because the masks the CDC recommend did not work but rather because the nation chose not to use them.