Earlier this year, Adams often warned that the practice resulted in increased face contact and contributed to a false sense of security. That advice has been rejected by administration officials, who are now all urging Americans to cover their faces in public.
“We were wrong in February and March due to the fact that we did not think there would be a high degree of asymptomatic spread of the coronavirus,” Adams said Monday.
But “once we realized that the science was different for this virus, we changed our recommendations,” he continued, adding that “in the future, I want people to understand that we are all on the same page.”
Despite the scientific consensus supporting the use of masks, President Donald Trump has been reluctant to promote the personal mitigation measure, only covering his face in public for the first time earlier this month.
Trump, eager to restart the U.S. economy in an apparent effort to bolster his reelection bid, has also pointed to past health officials’ aversion to masks in an effort to discredit his experience and grim assessments of the outbreak. .
The White House has particularly tried to undermine Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, including releasing to the media a list of statements he made earlier in the outbreak that might appear damaging in retrospect.
“Dr. Fauci said, ‘Don’t wear a mask.’ Our surgeon general, an excellent guy, said, ‘Don’t wear a mask,'” Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday. “Everyone who said, ‘Don’t wear a mask,’ suddenly everyone should wear a mask.”
Fauci acknowledged last month that the administration was slow to endorse the use of masks due to concerns from the public health community about the shortage of personal protective equipment in the U.S.
