Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that Covid measures such as school and business closures may have been too harsh, in a rare admission of the mistakes officials made in responding to the pandemic in 2020 and early 2021.
The former White House doctor also admitted that some recommendations he endorsed were not backed by science, including the six-foot social distancing guideline.
In heated testimony before a congressional committee, Dr. Fauci, 83, said that while officials are issuing advice based on the current public health situation, it is “very, very clear” that in the future they will need consider “possible negative side effects.” ‘ of things like mask and vaccine mandates and asking ‘how can we do better next time.’
Other memorable moments from Dr. Fauci’s testimony included him evoking an action movie while describing conspiracy theories claiming he parachuted into CIA headquarters to discuss how to make Covid more transmissible and harrowing when describing threats of death that he and his family have faced.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), testified Monday before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Dr. Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), testified Monday before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic for the second time, and while continuing to downplay any role the NIAID played in a possible lab leakage and gain-of-function experiments, he admitted that some preventative measures may have gone too far and led to detrimental results.
Dr. Fauci said he believed the harsh lockdown measures implemented in the early days of the pandemic, when the virus was killing nearly 5,000 people a day, were justified, but added that it is “debatable” how long they should have been kept in place.
The former senior public health official, who has been continually criticized for his role during the Covid-19 pandemic, admitted that the prolonged closure of schools had significant negative psychological and educational effects on young children.
However, Dr. Fauci explained, officials were responding to information in real time and, looking back, things should have been done differently.
He said: “I think the things we did at the beginning were in the context of a horrible situation of 4,000 to 5,000 deaths a day, but that doesn’t mean you don’t go back and look and say, ‘We did everything we did at that time.'” and the duration for which we did it, was it appropriate and should we re-examine it?”
Students’ learning loss and social setbacks have been well-documented, with an NIH study calling the impact of mask-wearing on literacy and learning “very negative.”
And the impacts of social distancing caused “depression, generalized anxiety, acute stress, and intrusive thoughts,” another NIH study found.
When subcommittee staff director Mitch Benzine asked Dr. Fauci whether, in preparing for the next pandemic, it is important to consider the unintended consequences of such harsh public health measures, the former top public health official responded: ” Absolutely”.
Dr. Fauci also agreed that once there is a better understanding of who the most vulnerable and affected people are in a pandemic, officials should “craft stronger public health measures to specifically favor those demographics.”
However, he cautioned that in new outbreaks, it is often a “moving target and you only hear about other vulnerable ones as you progress through the outbreak.”
This hearing is the first time Dr. Fauci has testified publicly since he retired in 2022. Earlier this year, he appeared before the subcommittee for a closed-door interview that lasted 14 hours over two days.
Last week, House Republicans released transcripts of those interviews, which revealed that he invented the six-foot social distancing rule and other measures to “protect” Americans from Covid.
Speaking to counsel on behalf of the House subcommittee in January, Fauci told Republicans that the six-foot social distancing rule “just came out” and that he didn’t remember how it came about.
‘You know, I don’t remember. “She just showed up,” she said, according to committee transcripts, when asked how the rule came about.
He added that he was “not aware of any studies” supporting social distancing, and admitted that such studies “would be very difficult” to conduct.
In Monday’s testimony, Dr. Fauci clarified that he meant that the six-foot social distancing rule, recommended by the CDC, had no scientific evidence backed by clinical trials to support that keeping six feet away from people would stop the transmission of Covid-19. .
However, he added, he did not want to oppose official CDC guidelines because it would be frowned upon to criticize another federal government health organization.