While conceding missteps in the federal response to the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday it is not too late to avoid the dire picture he outlined in congressional testimony of 100,000 coronavirus cases a day.

The nation’s leading infectious disease experts said the conflicting advice offered by federal leaders around face masks in the early days of the pandemic helped sow distrust and continues to hamper the government’s ability to slow the outbreak.

“We have to admit it, that that mixed message in the beginning, even though it was well meant to allow masks to be available for health workers, that was detrimental in getting the message across,” Fauci said in an interview with Mary Louise Kelly of NPR’s All Things Considered. “No doubt about it.”

Despite the overwhelming consensus among public-health experts that face masks can help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, face coverings have become a partisan issue, something critics of the federal response have blamed on what they say has been a confusing back-and-forth on the issue from the Trump administration.

As late as February 29, Surgeon General Jerome Adams was telling Americans on Twitter to stop buying masks, saying they are “NOT effective.” But the guidance soon changed, and by early April the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending that Americans wear face coverings in public. Even then, however, President Trump said he would not be wearing a mask himself.

“I think that that did have an effect,” said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of the conflicting guidance. “The message early on became confusing,” he said.

But, he added, once it became clear people can spread the virus without knowing they’re sick, public health leaders realized the message needed to change.

“We have people who may not even know they’re infected and are inadvertently infecting others,” said Fauci.

And the latest evidence shows some protection to the wearer too. “It isn’t 100% protection by any means, but certainly the amount that you get is worth wearing it, not only worth wearing it, but really compels you to wear it.”

Fauci said he has been encouraged by a growing chorus among Republican leaders in recent days encouraging Americans to wear masks. That list has grown to include not only Vice President Mike Pence, but top Republicans in the Senate, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Marco Rubio of Florida.

That’s been matched by a rising number of states that now require that masks be worn in public. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia now mandate masks in public — a list that was joined by Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

The tightening of coronavirus-related restrictions in many states comes amid a rapidly escalating surge in new cases that has eclipsed some of the worst days of the pandemic during the spring. More than 44,000 cases were reported Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, one of the highest daily totals yet.

And the worst may still be to come. In testimony before the Senate on Tuesday, Fauci warned that the virus could soon reach 100,000 cases per day.

In his testimony, Fauci said one reason cases continue to climb is because the nation may not have shut down as aggressively as it needed to early in the crisis. He noted that in Europe, as much as 95% of the population was effectively shut down, while in the U.S., the figure was closer to 50%.

“If you look at the Europeans, they got the curve way down,” he told NPR. “Once the curve is way down … it is much easier, when you do get blips of infection as you try to open up, to contain those infections. And if you look at our curve, it peaked, it came down a little and then it stayed about flat until just recently when it resurged up again. It makes it much more difficult because … you’re sort of chasing after things as opposed to getting your thumb on them. So we’re in a bad position because of what happened early on.”

Fauci said he believes the country can avoid another lockdown, “but we have to do things a bit differently than what we’ve been doing.”

He said activities like “congregating in bars, congregating in crowds, people getting together in a celebratory way … without wearing masks” contributed to recent case surges. This behavior, he said, while understandable because people “felt cooped up,” represented “a violation of the principles of what we’re trying to do, and that is the social distancing, the wearing of masks.”

“It’s really in our hands as a community, as a nation, as a populace to make this happen,” he said. “It does not have to be 100,000 cases a day.”

Updated at 12:55 p.m. ET

Seattle police started to dismantle the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone early Wednesday morning after Mayor Jenny Durkan issued an emergency order declaring the blocks-long area an “unlawful assembly” that requires immediate action.

Durkan’s order calls for clearing barricades out of the streets near Cal Anderson Park and the police department’s East Precinct — two main landmarks of the zone widely known by its acronym, CHOP.

As of 9:25 a.m. local time, officers had “made a total of 31 arrests for failure to disperse, obstruction, assault, and unlawful weapon possession,” Seattle police said via Twitter.

Officers who made their way into the area Wednesday morning announced that protesters could leave through a “safe exit” to the south, the department said.

As of Wednesday, the Cal Anderson Park area is now closed. The mayor ordered city agencies to remove tents used by people who have been camping in the park, saying police should order protesters to leave.

“I can see people wearing florescent vests with ‘SDOT’ on them putting tents and stuff from the side of the road into bags,” said Anna Boiko-Weyrauch, reporting from the scene for NPR member station KUOW. “There are large clusters of police on every side, on the perimeter of the CHOP, some with bicycles, very heavily outfitted, some have coffee at this point in the morning.”

The protest zone was established in early June when Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and its prominent precinct building became a gathering point for protesters against racial injustice following George Floyd’s death while in police custody in Minneapolis.

But now, Durkan said, conditions in the area “have deteriorated to the point where public health, life and safety are threatened.”

Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said she supports the Black Lives Matter movement “but enough is enough.”

“The CHOP has become lawless and brutal,” Best said. She noted that several shootings, including two deaths, have occurred in the area, along with “robberies, assaults, violence and countless property crimes.”

A large police presence is in the area to provide “perimeter security for city crews offering services and performing environmental cleanup,” Seattle police said.

When police largely ceded control of the area last month, protesters quickly formed a community of activists, artists and speakers. The zone hosted movie nights, a medical clinic and discussions about how to address systemic racism and problems with police use of force. But it also became known for violence that sometimes erupted during the night.

Some of the officers deployed Wednesday to the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone will be wearing “a higher level of protective gear,” the police chief said, describing it as a necessary step due to recent violence.

Cal Anderson Park was temporarily closed to the public on Tuesday to allow city workers to assess damage and plan for repairs. The city’s transportation department, assisted by police, also removed 10 concrete barriers — but as crowds formed around them, the work crew left the area.

Durkan said the effort to clear the obstructions “was quickly met with agitated opposition to the removal.”

Protesters there have listed three main demands: to cut funding for the Seattle police by 50%, to devote that money instead to community efforts such as restorative justice and health care, and to ensure that protesters are not charged with crimes. Many protesters are also calling on Durkan to resign.

“Black Lives Matter groups say they intend to continue their protests, though not necessarily in that area,” NPR’s Martin Kaste reported from Seattle.

The mayor’s emergency order calls for Seattle Parks and Recreation to work with the community, including residents and protesters, alike to develop a plan “to preserve the public art, create a community garden and other possible features like a conversation corner.”

Only after it was enacted did Beijing unveil the full text of its controversial new national security law imposed by fiat on Hong Kong.

Tuesday an elite body within China’s legislature voted unanimously to adopt the law in a rushed, secretive process. Even Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said she hadn’t been allowed to see a draft before the law’s passage.

Broadly, the law criminalizes four types of activity — secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and collusion with foreign entities — carrying a penalty of up to life in prison.

Beijing says the law is crucial to safeguarding Hong Kong’s economic development and political stability. Legal experts and Hong Kong civil society leaders say the measure ends once and for all any remaining autonomy the region enjoys under Chinese rule.

Here are five takeaways about what the law means for Hong Kong.

Beijing will set up its own national security agency in Hong Kong beholden only to the mainland

The law empowers China to set up a “National Security Commission” to oversee the investigation and prosecution of any violations. This committee is subject neither to judicial review nor Hong Kong law — meaning it operates without any local checks or balances.

“With this law being superior to all local law and the Basic Law (Hong Kong’s constitution) itself, there is no avenue to challenge the vague definitions of the four crimes in the law as violating basic rights,” says Michael C. Davis, a fellow at the Wilson Center. “Now people take their rights subject to the interest of the state.”

Beijing will appoint an adviser to sit on the committee to “guide” national security work. “A more cynical person might suggest that the ‘adviser’ will in reality be the most powerful person in the committee,” says Alvin Y.H Cheung, a law fellow at New York University.

It is unclear how stringently China will apply this new national security law, but legal experts say Beijing now holds a legal trump card over Hong Kong.

“The full impact of the law will only be clear with implementation,” says Margaret Lewis, a law professor at Seton Hall Law School and a specialist on Hong Kong and Taiwan. “What we do know is that Beijing now has an efficient, official tool for silencing critics who step foot in Hong Kong.”

The law applies to anyone, anywhere in the world

The law is expansively extraterritorial in its scope. According to Article 38, it can apply even to offenses committed “outside the region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the region.”

That means an American penning an editorial for a U.S. newspaper that argues for, say, sanctions against China, could technically fall afoul of the law for “inciting hatred” against Beijing.

“It is asserting extraterritorial jurisdiction over every person on the planet,” wrote Donald Clarke, a law professor at George Washington University, noting that the national security law is even more broad in scope than China’s own criminal law.

Foreign media outlets, NGOs and other international organizations could also face more stringent regulation and censorship in Hong Kong. Article 54 calls for stricter management of such entities.

Serious national security cases will be tried in mainland Chinese courts, by Chinese judges

In “complex” and “serious” cases or those in which a security threat is imminent, China will be able to assert complete legal jurisdiction.

That means China can extradite suspects to mainland China to face trial — an extreme version of the extradition bill that was shelved after setting off mass peaceful protests last year in Hong Kong. Defendants in such cases will be subject to Chinese criminal law, sweeping aside Hong Kong’s judicial system. China can also waive trial-by-jury and deny public access to the trial if the case is deemed to contain sensitive information.

“The [national security] law is a total destruction of Hong Kong’s legal and judicial system,” said Victoria Hui, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame.

China says Chinese and Hong Kong legal systems are incompatible, so China’s must be seen as the default legal .authority.

“The mainland’s national security office abides by Chinese law,” Zhang Xiaoming, Executive Deputy Director of Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, told reporters on Wednesday. “Hong Kong’s legal system cannot be expected to implement the laws of the mainland.”

The law is designed to quell any dissent in Hong Kong against Beijing’s rule

Serious perpetrators of subversion, terrorism, collusion with foreign forces and secession face life in prison under the new law.

Yet such crimes are “all vaguely defined and thus potentially capacious in practice,” says Jacques deLisle, a law professor and expert on Hong Kong’s legal system at the University of Pennsylvania.

The law also appears to be written to specifically address a raft of proposed legislation Hong Kong’s government was forced to suspend in recent decades due to popular opposition.

For example, the national security law now mandates Hong Kong’s government undertake “national security education” in school, social organizations and media outlets — correcting, in Beijing’s eyes, 2012 protests which shelved legislation that would have inserted more “patriotic education” in Hong Kong curricula.

The law also mandates anyone entering public office in Hong Kong to take an oath swearing allegiance to Beijing — an apparent response to a 2016 debacle in which Beijing barred two Hong Kong legislators from assuming office after they refused to recite the oath as written.

“There is a lot of poking sticks and picking at scabs of past Hong Kong controversies that Beijing lost,” says deLisle.

Already, a chill is spreading through Hong Kong

Within hours of the law being passed, two opposition political parties in Hong Kong announced they were voluntarily disbanding. Other activists have resigned from organizations that may now be considered subversive.

“In part because of how vaguely many parts of the law are described, there will be further hits to civil society. The impact on universities will be dramatic,” says Jeff Wasserstrom, a historian and the author of the recent book Vigil about Hong Kong.

Hong Kong residents have been deleting their social media accounts en masse as they rush to remove speech that could be considered subversive or secessionist. Sales of VPN software, used to jump over Chinese-style internet controls and evade some digital surveillance, have skyrocketed in Hong Kong.

On July 1, the first full day after the law took effect, thousands of Hong Kong residents took to the streets to protest the law and Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule. For the first time in 23 years, organizers were denied permission to congregate in commemoration of the 1997 handover.

Police say they made their first handful of arrests under the national security law, including one man who unfurled a flag advocating for Hong Kong’s independence from China.