Fauci: Draconian Covid Lockdowns Were Justified

CLOUD: “I’m going to go through a list of Covid mitigation measures that you supported over the course of the pandemic and ask you to give me a yes or no as to whether you believe these measures were justified. Business closures?”
Fauci: “When 5,000 people were dying a day, yes.”
CLOUD: “Church closures?”
Fauci: “Same thing.”
CLOUD: “School closures?”
Fauci: “Again, the —”
CLOUD: “Stay at home orders?”
Fauci: “These were important when we were trying to stop the tsunami of deaths that were occurring early on.”
CLOUD: “Early on?”
Fauci: “How long you kept them going is debatable.”
CLOUD: “Mask mandates for adults, mask mandates for children, mask mandates for children under five?”
Fauci: “And going back to what I said before, all of that is in the context of at that time 4-5,000 people a day were dying. [crosstalk]”
CLOUD: “Mask mandates for children under five, there’s scientific evidence for that?”
Fauci: “Excuse me?”
CLOUD: “Mask mandates for children under five, there’s scientific evidence supporting that?”
Fauci: “There was no study that did masks on kids before. You couldn’t do the study. You had to respond to an epidemic that was killing 4-5,000 Americans per day.”
CLOUD: “Vaccine mandates for employees? Vaccine mandates for students? Vaccine mandates for military?”
Fauci: “Vaccines save lives. It is very, very clear that vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people worldwide.”
CLOUD: “I’m not debating — we’re talking about Covid-19. Did or do the vaccines, the Covid-19 vaccine stop anyone from getting Covid?”
Fauci: “I have answered that question to the chairman. Early on, it became clear that —”
CLOUD: “They didn’t.”
Fauci: “— No. Actually no. In the beginning, it clearly prevented infection into certain percentage of people but the durability of its ability to prevent infection was not long, it was measured in months.”
CLOUD: “And they didn’t stop you from spreading it either, correct?”
Fauci: “Early on it did if it prevented infection. But what became clear that it did not prevent transmission when the ability to prevent infection vaned.”
CLOUD: “I think what’s troubling is when the American people look at the certainty and the — the case at which people lost jobs, they lost livelihoods, I had rural hospitals in my — in my area that did not have a single case of Covid in their rural community that had to shut down and people not get care that they did need for cancer and — and some passed away because of those kinds of things. And — and time after time, people’s lives are destroyed and we have not seen the same sort of once the new data came available we did not see a change, of course. And you’ll point out, for example, on the schools that the CDC, you know, put out the guidelines, for example, but — but we know that those guidelines end up being protection from lawsuits. And so if you don’t want to be sued, you better follow the guidelines. So they’re not mandates, de facto mandates, but they turn out to be such a mandate. And — and when the science began to change — we all understand that in the first couple of weeks, first few weeks, even a couple of months, we were all trying to figure it out. I think there’s a lot of grace for that. The concern is that as the science became available, there wasn’t like, ‘Oh, maybe we should consider the lab leak theory. Oh, maybe we should consider natural immunity.’ We never heard these messaging coming from you or from anyone else who stood on the sidelines talking about these things, and it’s left the American people with a tremendous distrust. I want to talk a little bit about the grant process. My understanding from your testimony to us it says that the NIH process for awarding grants is that basically research proposal goes to peer review committee to receive a priority score, then it goes to an advisory council for NIH personnel. It receives a final — basically the group votes on it, and then eventually it ends up on your desk for signature. Right? Now, you said in that that sometimes, if I recall correctly, those grants are often approved en bloc, en masse, when they’re voted on, and then you sign off on them.”
Fauci: “That’s correct.”
CLOUD: “I — I — this — this is one of the things that’s really troubling to the American people because we — they look at their lives being destroyed and there’s no one to hold accountable because these systems of — of accountability have become systems of plausible deniability. And so your name is on every single grant. But yet you — you absolve yourself of any sort of responsibility by saying, ‘Well, you know, it goes to this committee that’s, you know, that has a number of people on it, and they’re approved en bloc and so there’s no accountability for anything, any of the taxpayer dollars that are going forth.”
Fauci: “I disagree with you, congressman.”