“If masks are what saves lives is [Fauci] not then directly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths?”
If he knowingly downplayed masks to win an election or to improve his public image or some other selfish reason, the answer is clearly yes.
If he downplayed masks because presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission was not understood (as I think he has explained), then no. Remember we were and still are learning about the virus.
If he knowingly downplayed masks because there was a shortage of PPE and he wanted to minimize PPE hoarding so doctors and nurses could get it, then it gets morally ambiguous. I don’t think it would be accurate to say he’s responsible for tens of thousands of death, because the justification is that by allowing PPE to flow to hospitals he saved more lives; on the other hand, it is in a sense playing god. Whether you would agree it was the correct moral decision, I don’t think you can say unequivocally that he was directly responsible for those deaths.
Aside for the hypotheticals about what he knew and why health officials did not recommend wearing masks at the time, how many people asking this question would have worn masks at the time? How many wear them now?
Let’s turn the question around. If we take it as fact that masks do save lives, and if someone does not wear a mask and infects someone and causes their death, is that person not responsible for the death? Of course, no one can prove in any given situation which person caused the infection or if a mask would have helped, so we’re not going to convene a beis din and make a capital case out of this. However, that person should at least wake up to the sofeik that they may infect and kill someone.
Secondly, from a community wide perspective, health officials say it is a vadai that people will get sick if the community does not adhere to masks and social distancing. If you’re not convinced, look around. So while we can’t say with certainty that one particular person is responsible for someone else’s death, we can say the community is responsible for the deaths in the community. And if you’re not convinced it’s a vadai, then it’s at worst a sofeik and people should act at least as stringently as they would act if there was a sofeik chillul shabbos deoraysa. If you want to argue it’s not even a sofeik, I’m all ears. My phone is lighting up with tehillim names; we all know people who are critically ill, and some of us know people who have died in the last few weeks.
I’d like to hear the argument that it is a mere coincidence that neighborhoods next to frum neighborhoods that were better about masks and social distancing are not seeing the same spikes. If anything, based on the logic prevailing in mid-June that the frum world has antibodies and herd immunity, those neighborhoods should see more cases, not fewer.