I don't see the lie. As I said, I don't remember them ever saying that it was safe without mask. They only said it was not useful. I would actually say that at

I don't see the lie. As I said, I don't remember them ever saying that it was safe without mask. They only said it was not useful. I would actually say that at the time, it was counter-productive for the general public to wear masks, because it prevented protecting health professionals. I agree there is a bit of conundrum that "not useful" is not exactly in between "counter-productive" and "useful", and here you could argue that the "not useful" in Véran's mouth meant "doesn't protect". I definitely wouldn't blame you for that, and yes I'm being very nice to them for my interpretation. The reality is that had they said "yes masks are super important, but it's even more important to give them to health professionals", we'd have seen what we saw with hydroxychloroquine (which is that people who actually needed it couldn't get it), but 10 times worse. Could they have twisted their words 7 times more in their mouth before saying it, so that it's not factually a lie? Yes sure.