Infectious Disease Expert at Fauci’s NIAID Challenges School Mask Mandates

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, gives an update on the Omicron COVID-19 variant during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington on Dec. 1, 2021. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

A researcher who works for the agency headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci and two other scientists made the argument that schools should not mandate mask-wearing in schools, undercutting the federal government’s recommendation that they should.

“Many public-health experts maintain that masks worn correctly are essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19,” wrote Margery Smelkinson—who works for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases headed by Fauci—along with Leslie Bienen, a faculty member at the Oregon Health & Science University–Portland State University School of Public Health, and Jeanne Noble, an emergency medicine doctor at the University of California–San Francisco.