Fauci Tells Good Morning America He’s Been Wearing a Mask for Appearances: ‘Didn’t Want to Look Like I Was Giving Mixed Signals’

Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged in an interview with Good Morning America that he has been wearing a mask for the sake of public perception, but said he was becoming more “comfortable” not doing so.

“I’m obviously careful because I’m a physician and a health-care provider,” Fauci said in the appearance with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I am now much more comfortable in people seeing me indoors without a mask. I mean, before the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] made the recommendation change, I didn’t want to look like I was giving mixed signals.

The CDC on Thursday updated its guidance related to face masks to suggest that vaccinated individuals did not need to wear masks in most settings. The comments from Fauci were particularly notable due to prominent exchanges he has had with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in which he emphatically denied that he was masking for reasons unrelated to his own health.

“If we’re not spreading the infection, isn’t it just theater? You have the vaccine and you’re wearing two masks, isn’t that theater?” Paul asked Fauci at a March congressional hearing. “Here we go again with the theater,” Fauci replied, before saying that variants of the virus were “a good reason for a mask.”

“The chances of my getting infected in an indoor setting is extremely low, and that is the reason why in indoor settings now, I feel comfortable about not wearing a mask — because I’m fully vaccinated,” Fauci told Stephanopoulos on Monday.

He also said he believed the United States had a role to play in getting more Covid-19 vaccines distributed around the globe, adding, “I feel that as a rich country, we really do have a moral obligation to play a major role in making sure there are vaccines to those countries that can’t afford to get the vaccines themselves.”

Watch above via ABC.

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