People are being misled about studies examining the effectiveness of face masks against COVID, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Jonathan Karl, a co-anchor of ABC’s “This Week,” pressed Fauci on the efficacy of masking near the end of an interview on Sunday. “There’s a new study out that suggests that masks were actually not effective, at least in a global sense, in containing the pandemic,” Karl said. “What is your sense, looking back at all this? Did masks prove to be less effective than you anticipated?”

Fauci responded by insisting that “some of the studies are confusing” and then singled out an analysis released in January by The Cochrane Institute, which raised the prospect that masks hardly made a difference in stopping the spread of respiratory viruses such as COVID.

The study prompted headlines saying that face masks made “little to no difference” in preventing the spread of COVID after a wave of mask guidelines and mandates during the pandemic, but Karla Soares-Weiser, editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library, responded with a statement in March saying it was an “inaccurate and misleading interpretation” to claim that the study found that “masks don’t work.”

Fauci JUST NOW: “There are a number of studies that show that masks actually do work.” pic.twitter.com/hJeT6EZXyw

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) September 10, 2023

“The study that recently has been now quoted a lot and causing a lot of confusion is this Cochrane study, which even the people who run the Cochrane study say that that study can be misleading because people have commented on that study saying, ‘Absolutely masks don’t work,’ which is absolutely not the case because there are a number of studies that show that masks actually do work,” Fauci said.

“And there’s a lot of confusion where you take a broad series of studies, and you look at them in a meta-analysis,” he added. “Only a couple of those studies were specifically looking at COVID. So, I think we’d better be careful that that study that people keep talking about can be very, very misleading. There’s a lot of good data that masks work.”

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Fauci, now part of the faculty at Georgetown University, was a longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Toward the end of his tenure in government, Fauci faced blowback for how he jumped from advising people not to wear face masks early in the COVID pandemic to advocating for masking against the virus, a change he attributed to the emergence of new data.

Fauci admits that masks don’t work for the public at large but still absurdly claims masks work on an individual basis.  More subterfuge. pic.twitter.com/UcjOa8flkr

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) September 3, 2023

In an interview that aired on CNN last week, Fauci insisted that “many studies” show masking protects people on an “individual basis” rather than on a “broad population” level.

One of Fauci’s most vocal critics, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), shot back in a post to X. “Fauci admits that masks don’t work for the public at large, but still absurdly claims masks work on an individual basis. More subterfuge,” Paul said.

Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said on Sunday that he was open to considering being on or supporting the presidential ticket for the No Labels political organization if the conditions are right. 

Cassidy made the comments during an appearance on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” with host Chuck Todd. The senator said that while he has an interest in potentially joining or supporting a ticket if the group approaches him, at the end of the day, it depends on who the Republican and Democrat nominees are. 

“If they came and spoke to me, I would certainly speak to them back,” Cassidy said when the host posed a hypothetical rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, who currently leads the Republican field. 

Cassidy said he has not spoken with No Labels about a potential run but that it is something he would be “open” to. Several Democrats have expressed concerns that a third-party bid by the organization could unintentionally lead to a Trump victory. At the same time, the group bills itself as an anti-Trump alternative to GOP donors.

“Seventy percent of the American people want something different,” he said. “Plausibly, we could have a setting in which someone has been convicted and someone else shows signs of mental decline so significant 70% of the American people are already thinking he’s too old.” 

WATCH: Would @SenBillCassidy (R-La.) consider joining or supporting a No Labels 2024 presidential ticket?

Cassidy: “Depending on who the candidates were.”@chucktodd: “We’re looking at Biden and Trump.”

Cassidy: “If they came and spoke to me, I would speak to them back." pic.twitter.com/PgddN7NQ8A

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) September 10, 2023

The Louisiana Republican said Biden is not being “transparent” with the American people when it comes to his health and mental state, adding that there is an “actual need” for the electorate to know about Biden’s health, but that “we’re not being told.” A Wall Street Journal poll released last week found 73% of registered voters believed the president was “too old to run for president.” 

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“With this, should there be another option for the American people? And, I think plausibly there should be,” Cassidy said. 

Cassidy, a former Democrat, was first elected to the Senate in 2014 and re-elected in 2020. He was one of just seven Republican Senators who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment on “incitement of insurrection.” Last month, he said he would vote for “a Republican” if Trump were the nominee but added that he believes the former president should drop out of the race. On Sunday, he told Todd he “might have to write” in a Republican. 

According to the No Labels website, the group aims to create a “Unity ticket” as an “insurance plan” if the Democrat and Republican parties nominate candidates who “the vast majority of Americans don’t want to vote for in 2024.” They are trying to reach the “politically homeless,” the website says. 

Late last month, the group’s founding chairman, Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic U.S. Senator from Connecticut, announced there would be a party convention in Dallas, Texas, in April 2024 – but only if they believe they have a “realistic chance to win.”