Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the top U.S. public health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic, told House lawmakers on Tuesday that he was “not convinced” that children suffered learning loss. due to the closure of schools his agency supported.
The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) made this surprising admission on the second and final day of his 14-hour closed-door interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, according to two of its members.
“He says he’s still not convinced that there was learning loss; that, in his opinion, that’s still really open to discussion,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas), who sits on the panel, told The Post.
Dr. Anthony Fauci told House lawmakers Tuesday that he was “not convinced” that children suffered learning loss because of the school closures his agency supported. AP Fauci repeatedly called for strict social distancing, masking and lockdowns, but has frequently denied responsibility for the consequences. AP
“Believe [if] If you ask any parent, they will tell you that it was a great success in the development of their children,” Cloud added.
A member of former President Donald Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force and President Biden’s chief medical advisor before his retirement at the end of 2022, Fauci repeatedly called for strict social distancing, mask-wearing and lockdowns, but has frequently denied responsibility for the consequences.
“Show me a school I closed and show me a factory I closed. Never. “I never did,” he told The New York Times Magazine in April 2023, when asked about his support for “iron fist” policies.
“Believe [if] If you ask any parent, they will tell you it was a huge success in the development of their children,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) told The Post. CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“I gave a public health recommendation that echoed the CDC recommendation, and people made a decision based on that,” he said. “But I never criticized the people who had to make decisions one way or another.”
Cloud said Fauci had demonstrated an “uncanny ability to forget what happened or then find ways to evade any kind of responsibility for the influence he had” during his marathon session.
“They wash their hands of any kind of responsibility and say, ‘Oh, those decisions were made by the school districts.’ But school districts know that if they don’t follow the guidelines coming from the federal government, they open themselves up to lawsuits,” Cloud added.
The U.S. Department of Education released statistics in September 2022 showing that nine-year-olds’ reading scores had plummeted to their lowest point in 30 years and math scores fell for the first time in half a century. . James Keivom
The U.S. Department of Education released statistics in September 2022 showing that reading scores among nine-year-olds had plummeted over the course of the pandemic to their lowest point in 30 years, while scores mathematics fell for the first time in half a century of tracking.
Tensions also erupted over Fauci’s refusal to discuss his role in funding gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China, with members of the House COVID panel telling reporters that the former NIAID doctor continued to use an alternative definition of the term to avoid discussion. .
“I think he’s playing semantics with the term, and I think it’s clear that the Wuhan lab was doing gain-of-function research,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), another member of the panel, told The Post. panel.
House COVID Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) told reporters that determining whether SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab remained a priority for his panel. fake images
“I mentioned to someone today that it was almost like Bill Clinton arguing about what ‘is,’” Cloud said of Fauci’s evasions.
“They were figuring out what the different definitions were, so even when this was happening, there was one definition on the NIH website, and yet Fauci and the NIAID were operating under a different definition when they talked about it,” the representative said. . said Morgan Griffith (R-Va.).
Griffith added that he believed Fauci’s previous testimony before Congress was truthful “because there are different types of gain of function and this was made clear.”
Both the Department of Energy and the FBI have determined that a lab leak was the “most likely” explanation for COVID-19, while the CIA could not reach a consensus. AFP via Getty Images
Flanked by a Capitol Police officer and his lawyers, Fauci declined to speak to reporters as he entered the hearing room Tuesday morning, after claiming the day before that he “didn’t remember” in response to more than 100 questions from committee members.
Fauci ignored The Post’s requests for comment on his repeated denials that he had lifted a pause on funding for gain-of-function research in Wuhan, and his subsequent attempts to cover it up and evade accountability to Congress.
His attorneys, two of them personally hired and two provided by the federal government, responded to the Post’s request for an opportunity to ask questions: “No questions, no answers.”
Fauci ignored The Post’s requests for comment on his repeated denials that he had lifted a funding pause to approve gain-of-function research in Wuhan, and his attempts to cover it up. fake images
House COVID Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) told reporters that determining whether SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab or jumped naturally from animals to humans remained an issue. a priority for him and other members of the panel and that Fauci had expressed an “open mind” to both theories.
“I had the opportunity to do science with Dr. Fauci, comparing nature to possibly artificial in a laboratory, all those things,” Wenstrup said. “And I think it really opened our eyes that we need more discussion about this, and he was okay with that. So I think that was positive.”
“Having spent so much time bottling it up, he said there’s a possibility,” Malliotakis also said. “And he recognized that we would need some cooperation from the Chinese to further investigate the lab leak theory.”
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) told reporters that the transcribed interview had been “helping us get the facts and details,” while saying the decision to question Fauci was “pretty political.” fake images
The ranking member of the House COVID Subcommittee, Raúl Ruiz (D-Calif.), left the hearing room through a back entrance to avoid speaking to the press, but issued a scathing statement at the hearing Monday into the night, denouncing the Republican effort as a “politically driven” effort. fishing expedition.”
He did not attend any part of the hearing Monday, but Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), another member of the panel, told reporters that the transcribed interview had been “helping us get the facts and the details,” while also that said the decision to question Fauci was “quite political.”
Both the Department of Energy and the FBI have determined that a lab leak was the “most likely” explanation for COVID-19, while other intelligence agencies such as the CIA could not reach a consensus.
Wenstrup had previously revealed that his committee received allegations that Fauci had been admitted to CIA headquarters “without check-in” to “influence” analysts’ COVID origins investigation, but most staff said that the NIAID document denied those allegations Tuesday.
Fauci also coordinated with NIH Director Francis Collins to silence dissent over the possible leak of the virus from a Chinese laboratory. AP
Internal government records and Fauci’s personal emails show he was aware of potentially dangerous experiments with SARS-like viruses that took place between 2014 and 2019, supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the EcoHealth Alliance, based in Manhattan.
Other records obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic also show that the former NIAID director coordinated with then-NIH Director Francis Collins to silence dissent over the possible leak of the virus from a chinese laboratory
In an email from February 1, 2020Fauci expressed alarm because researchers at Wuhan University, which also received a U.S. grant, were known to “have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with the adaptation of bat viruses to the human infection.”
Fauci told the committee that he should not have stated as a “fact” in his email that gain-of-function experiments were being conducted in Wuhan.
Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, told The Post that “Fauci repeatedly and flagrantly violated US government policies put in place to protect the public from laboratory-generated pandemics.”
“Fauci’s attempt to deny that he violated US government policies by claiming that he prefers different definitions of ‘gain of function’ and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen is equivalent, exactly equivalent, to a terrorist trying to deny that he violated the federal law by stating that it prefers a different definition of ‘terrorism,'” Ebright said.
Documents obtained by the House COVID panel have also revealed that Fauci’s NIAID avoided a government pause on gain-of-function research between 2014 and 2017 to greenlight experiments in Wuhan.
“He even acknowledged today that they had no oversight…they had no security checks,” Malliotakis said of Fauci’s time at the NIAID. “Why are you signing millions of dollars? [worth of grants] Without proper investigation of these organizations or scrutiny of national security concerns?
“They abdicated their responsibility to ensure these funds were used appropriately and safely,” he added.
Last September, the Department of Health and Human Services banned the Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving further US funding.
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