05:37 PM
Tuesday, June 4, 2024
Agencies
In the past few hours, the testimony of Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a hearing of the US House of Representatives subcommittee on the US response to the Corona pandemic “Covid-19” and the origins of the virus, sparked a state of controversy, after he said…
News sites were filled with news stating that Fauci admitted to fabricating the social distancing rules that were implemented during the Corona pandemic – leaving a distance of 6 feet between people – and that there was no knowledge behind them.
In fact, those statements were made during his testimony at a House subcommittee hearing, after Republicans questioned Fauci on a wide range of topics, including the basis of public health recommendations during the pandemic and the use of email by public health officials.
The hearing is the first public testimony by the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Capitol Hill since his retirement from government service.
Fauci’s statements
Dr. Anthony Fauci said during the hearing that social distancing guidelines – leaving a distance of 6 feet (about 180 centimetres) between people – were introduced during the beginnings of the Corona pandemic, and even from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“It actually came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and was responsible for these types of guidelines for schools, not me,” the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases emphasized.
Regarding the statement that there is no science behind the guidelines, he explained that he repeated these guidelines during the epidemic, once, but he meant that there were no clinical trials to support them, as he said, “The matter had nothing to do with me because I did not make the recommendation, and my saying that there is no scientific basis for it” means “There is no clinical trial behind this.”
He added that this does not mean that the recommendation was wrong or not based on data, but rather it was based on previous studies on respiratory diseases and the spread of droplets, not including a study on “Covid-19”, which of course did not exist before.
Dr. Anthony Fauci believes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has used droplet studies for years as the basis for the 6-foot guidelines.
During the spread of the new Corona virus pandemic, scientists believed that larger contaminated droplets would fall from the air quickly and could not travel further than 6 feet, which is what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first supported “social distancing.”
The World Health Organization also recommended that people maintain “social distancing,” with a distance of one meter or 3.3 feet between them, but even as early as 2021, scientists began to realize that the Corona virus was transmitted through the air.
Experts concluded that it was almost as effective as the 6-foot mark in deterring infection, and would have allowed schools to reopen more quickly.
“The most costly intervention” is how Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner, described the idea of “social distancing” in his book about the pandemic, “Uncontrolled Spread.” “The 6-foot rule was probably the single most costly intervention recommended by the CDC,” he said. on diseases, which has been applied continuously throughout the epidemic.”
Social distancing saved lives, especially early in the pandemic, when people had no protection against a virus that infected millions of people, and behavioral changes to avoid infection with the coronavirus, followed by vaccination later, prevented about 800,000 deaths in the United States, according to a recent study. Published by the Brookings Institution.
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