In the 1950s there was a quiz show called “To Tell the Truth.” It has been reborn several times but retained its original format. A celebrity panel would try to discover which one of three contestants was telling the truth, as all claimed to be the same person with identical backgrounds.
I thought of that show in relation to the conflicting stories and claims that have come from “experts” during the last 16 months of the pandemic. People, including two U.S. presidents, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have all made statements which, at the time, they claimed were accurate and based on science, but turned out to be inaccurate.
Dr. Ghebreyesus initially dismissed allegations the virus originated in a Wuhan, China laboratory, as “extremely unlikely.” Now, he says, he was “premature” to rule out a lab leak.
Dr. Fauci at first called mask-wearing ineffective. In an email to Sylvia Burwell, the HHS Secretary in the Obama administration, Fauci wrote: “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 said the “typical mask” is “not really effective in keeping out the virus, which is small enough to pass through material.” Now he says the opposite.
Some people questioned these and other comments. For their skepticism, they were banned from social media and called spreaders of disinformation, even kooks.