Dr. Anthony Fauci said in congressional testimony that he reviewed no scientific evidence behind the specific recommendations for masking children or maintaining 6-foot social distancing before advocating these policies during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The revelations come from the full transcript, released Friday, of Fauci’s closed-door transcribed interview session in January before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The publication comes days before the former director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is slated to testify in his first public hearing since his retirement in December 2022.
When asked about social distancing recommendations that were implemented in businesses and schools during the early stages of the pandemic, Fauci said he did not recall where the precise number of 6 feet came from.
“It just sort of appeared,” Fauci said in his interview. “I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever.”
Fauci also said that he had not seen any scientific study supporting the measurement, noting that such a study would be “very difficult” to do with accuracy and scientific rigor.
The former NIAID chief also said the science behind masking recommendations for children is “still up in the air.”
The released transcript adds to what the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), told the Washington Examiner in an interview following the second day of transcribed interviews on Jan. 10.
Wenstrup committed to releasing the full interview transcripts with Fauci prior to his scheduled public hearing. Minimal information was redacted from the nearly 500 pages of transcripts from the 14 hours of interviews.
Fauci also acknowledged in the interview that vaccine mandates during the pandemic have contributed to diminished trust in vaccination overall.
When asked if vaccine mandates for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine could have led to long-term vaccine hesitancy, Fauci said that public health experts and policymakers need to do an “after-the-game, after-the-event evaluation of things.”
“We really need to take a look at the psyche of the country, have maybe some social-type studies to figure out, does the mandating of vaccines in the way the country’s mental framework is right now, does that actually cause more people to not want to get vaccinated, or not?” Fauci said.
Members of the subcommittee are expected to ask Fauci about his role in crafting pandemic policy for both the Trump and Biden administrations as well as his knowledge of the origins of the virus.