Did Fauci give bad advice on masks and traveling early in the crisis?

See Dr. Fauci Made the Coronavirus Pandemic Worse by Lying About Masks by Matt Novak of Gizmodo. Excerpt:

"Dr. Anthony Fauci has been hailed as a hero during the coronavirus pandemic, delivering thoughtful health advice while most members of the Trump regime have spread misinformation about covid-19. But there’s one area where Fauci let America down, hindering the public health response and giving the U.S. both the highest coronavirus case count and the worst recorded death toll in the world. Simply put, Fauci lied about whether masks were helpful in slowing the spread of the virus.

Fauci was asked yesterday by financial news outlet The Street why the U.S. government didn’t promote masks early on during the pandemic. Fauci, who sits on the Trump regime’s zombie-like coronavirus task force, hinted that he knew masks worked, he just wanted any available masks to be saved for health care workers.

“Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N-95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci said. “And we wanted to make sure that the people, namely the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.”

Fauci didn’t just fail to promote masks early on, he actively discouraged the use of masks, saying they didn’t work. Americans are now paying the price because too many people think masks are useless to combat the coronavirus. In reality, masks have been shown to help prevent the spread of covid-19, as the CDC now admits.

All we need to do is look at the things that Fauci was saying back in February—a time before most Americans were taking the threat of covid-19 seriously and people like Donald Trump were assuming it was just a problem for the Chinese government.

“There is no reason for anyone right now in the United States, with regard to coronavirus, to wear a mask,” Fauci told Spectrum News DC on February 14.

It was something that Fauci would say repeatedly whenever he gave interviews in February, as the pandemic spread to countries like Germany, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. And Fauci may not have known it yet, but coronavirus was also spreading quickly in the U.S. By the end of February, over 20 countries had identified the coronavirus within their borders.

Despite being remembered as level-headed during the early days of the crisis in the U.S., Fauci was incredibly slow to publicly recognize the threat from coronavirus. On February 17, he recalled stories of people asking whether it was safe to travel, ridiculing the idea that it might not be wise to get on a plane. But it was clear to anyone paying attention to news media outside of the U.S. that the coronavirus would soon be an international problem."