[SquishyPanda23]

How would you have given a point estimate that both accurately reflects the scientific confidence interval estimate and also serves as an aspirational target for public policy?

Keep in mind that if your estimate is too low many people will die or have significantly reduced life quality. And if your estimate is too high internet trolls will use that as fodder to discourage people from getting vaccinated.

[knodi123]

> and also serves as an aspirational target for public policy

There we go. He was giving aspirational targets, not scientific evaluations.

Sounds like he had a good reason to stretch the truth, but the fact remains.

[account42]

> Sounds like he had a good reason to stretch the truth, but the fact remains.

It's not a good reason - this kind of manipulation is exactly why people distrust governments and "science".

[SquishyPanda23]

I was encouraging you to reflect on why you think this is lying, because you are really grasping at straws.

You have not established any point where he lied or stretched the truth. What you have established is your personal axe to grind against Fauci.

It's good to examine why you feel the need to grind this axe.

We know why Fauci is controversial. He is controversial because the president wanted to let people die because he felt that is the truth about the pandemic came out he would lose power. Fauci told the truth and as a result was villainized by political extremists.

This alone explains, I don't know, like 99.9% of sentiment about Fauci.

So when you spend a lot of effort trying to convince people in the internet that he lied about something, but you're unable to produce any evidence, the perception is that you have some other reason for wanting to believe he lied.

So again I encourage you to think through what the ideal response would have been. Instead of trying to find any tiny reason to criticize him, actually think through what the right thing to do was.

EDIT: To make it even more clear, by the article you quoted, 100% of the numbers he gave were within the confidence interval. That is what it means to give a "scientific evaluation" as you say.

In other words, by your own admission he never told an untruth or a partial truth. He quoted the low end of the confidence interval saying "we likely need at least this many people assuming the vaccines are this effective etc". His gut feeling was that the numbers were higher, but he didn't have the evidence to say that, so the message we "we need at least this many people."

Then as we learned more he revised the estimates up closer to where he thought they should be initially, but which he didn't have evidence for.

Since he was telling the truth 100% of the time, it's difficult to make a case that he was lying or that he is untrustworthy.