I agree on the messaging of the vaccine. I don’t know if it was some people being overly optimistic or if it was intentionally misleading in hopes of getting more people to take the vaccine immediately. I do think there was an honest thought in the scientific community that if enough of the population could be vaccinated in a very tight window, perhaps we had a shot at slowing or even stopping Covid. But realities of the world and vaccine distribution should have made those people publicly acknowledge that such a feat was basically impossible. They should have been very honest up front what the vaccine was most likely to do: Keep you out of the hospital, and giving people most at risk a better chance at weathering bouts of the illness.

If they would have pitched it much like the flu shot, (which it really is, just for Covid) I think people would more more understanding of the situation we find ourselves in and we’d be seeing less of the absolutely bonkers conspiracy theories from the fringes.

Personally, I don’t want my tax dollars going towards beating a dead horse like Fauci over and over again through investigations and hearings for the next 2 years. His missteps with masks were avoidable and unfortunate. As anyone in the medical field will tell you about masks, bottom line: Yea, a high-quality mask like an n95 or kn95 will help you IF you wear it properly and consistently, especially if everyone in the room does the same. But reality doesn’t usually result in situations like that. People wear them under their nose, they take them off to scratch, they touch them with their hands constantly, etc. Basically makes the whole point null. And cloth masks don’t do much.

Should’ve just leveled with that stuff from the start. Our leaders here and across the world bungled the response and messaging, and in doing so they created fertile ground for conspiracies and gullible people to question science and medicine anew.