> A trove of media darling Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails was recently released to the public. The emails reveal early assertions that asymptomatic transmission is rare, that post-infection immunity is highly likely, and that masks are “not really effective.” However, you wouldn’t know that from the public messaging since the start of the pandemic, in which bureaucrats and journalists upheld lasting misconceptions that asymptomatic cases are dangerous, natural immunity is not a factor in protecting the population, and individuals are responsible for viral spread. These misconceptions fueled countless months of lockdowns, business closures, and job losses<p>This article is a complete mess in this section. Yes, emails from February 2020 revealed the scientific community still had a lack of understanding of the virus’ ability to spread from a pre-symptomatic host (often confused or merged with “asymptomatic” hosts who seem to typically not transmit due to lower viral load).<p>That isn’t exactly a scandal, it’s exactly what was being said publicly at the time too. There wasn’t anything surprising in the emails to anyone who followed the news and discussion in March-May 2020. We all saw, for instance, Fauci in the White House insisting 6 feet was enough to protect people because droplets from a cough don’t travel farther (wrong: overseas research and contact tracing showed the virus can be airborne and travel more than 6 feet inside a room), right alongside the early insistence that masks weren’t needed to reduce disease spread. Exactly what was being said in the emails was said publicly on TV.<p>Meanwhile, the emails seemed to show a lack of understanding of just how dangerous Covid-19 would be. We hit 600,000 deaths while the worst case models being discussed in Spring 2020 (on TV and privately) were just between 60k and 200k deaths. The virus did far more damage than people feared at first when lockdowns went into place.