Fauci said masks were not 'really effective' at blocking virus, emails reveal

Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an email correspondence last year that face masks aren’t needed unless an individual was sick and that the coronavirus was able to pass through personal face masks easily.

“Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading [an] infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci wrote to who is believed to be Obama-era Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell in February 2020.

Fauci, also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added: “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out [the] virus, which is small enough to pass through the material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in [keeping] out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you.”

Fauci FOIA Emails
//www.documentcloud.org/documents/20793561-leopold-nih-foia-anthony-fauci-emails