(Headline USA) Former COVID czar Anthony Fauci reportedly admitted during congressional testimony Tuesday that his social-distancing guidelines were not based on scientific data and that the COVID-19 lab leak theory is not a “conspiracy theory.”
Fauci appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Tuesday and was grilled by lawmakers on his handling of the pandemic under both the Trump and Biden administrations.
When pressed on why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidance in the early months of the pandemic urging people to remain “six feet apart,” Fauci admitted that this policy was “likely not based on scientific data.”
Rather, the social-distancing guideline “sort of just appeared,” Fauci said, according to Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, who chairs the committee.
Wenstrup said Fauci also acknowledged the legitimacy of the theory that COVID-19 escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, and the likelihood that his decision to encourage vaccine mandates “could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future.”
However, Wenstrup noted Fauci continued to “play semantics with the definition of a ‘lab-leak’” in an effort to cover up his own role downplaying the lab-leak theory.
Fauci’s testimony “revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority,” Wenstrup said in a statement afterward.
Wenstrup also suggested Fauci’s testimony was not as productive as it could have been, saying his committee remained “frustrated with Dr. Fauci’s inability to recollect COVID-19 information that is important for our investigation,” while others interviewed “do recall the facts.”
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, who sits on the panel, confirmed Fauci’s supposed short-term memory, saying the recently retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases showed an “amazing ability to either forget what happened or then to find ways to shirk any sort of responsibility for the influence that was had.”
