Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky took a two-word victory lap on Twitter on Tuesday after emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci came to light which appeared to show the doctor held private beliefs about the coronavirus pandemic that do not exactly square up with his public statements throughout the last year.
The emails were released under a Freedom of Information Act request, and obtained by Buzzfeed News and The Washington Post. One email appears to show Fauci dismissed common masks as a viable mitigation tool to protect people from being infected.
“Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci reportedly wrote to former Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell in February 2020.