Distancing and masks: invented rules, according to Fauci
There was no scientific basis for the social distance and mask-wearing tactics used to limit the Covid-19 outbreak. Immunologist Anthony Fauci, who testified on Monday, June 3rd before the US House subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic—which looks at the causes of Covid and the government's reaction to it—made the disclosure. After departing the Biden administration in 2022, Fauci made his first public appearance on Capitol Hill during the hearing, which revealed the parties' continued disagreement on the matter. Fauci was also questioned about the virus's origins and his affiliation with the non-profit organization EcoHealth Alliance throughout the session.
Fauci said in court that as a result, policies like social separation and masks were implemented without any scientific backing for their efficacy. Statements that gain even more significance in light of findings from a May 2022 National Institutes of Health (NIH) study that documented the detrimental effects of mask use on young people's literacy and learning as well as the ways in which social distancing has led to depression, generalized anxiety, acute stress, and intrusive thoughts. In January of last year, Fauci informed Republican legislators during a 14-hour interview behind closed doors that he had no memory of how the six-foot social separation guideline came to be. Fauci also acknowledged that he was not aware of any research that backed such social distance, pointing out that it would be exceedingly challenging to conduct such studies successfully. However, the public has been persuaded that social separation and masks are both very successful and backed by scientific data.
A portion of Fauci's questions at that point focused on the funding provided to EcoHealth Alliance. While Fauci has always maintained that American funding did not support gain-of-function research in Wuhan, we do know that EcoHealth Alliance was awarded millions of dollars in funds by the NIH between 2014 and 2020 to investigate potential coronaviruses derived from bats and works of gain-of-function. A petition from 31 scientific groups and 77 US Nobel Prize winners criticized the funding cancelation, which was carried out under pressure from then-President Donald Trump. The letter asked the NIH administration to reconsider the decision. The NIH subsequently determined in the summer of 2020 that EcoHealth Alliance may reactivate its funding provided the group fulfilled several requirements, such as guaranteeing U.S. research' access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and a Wuhan virus sample. The EcoHealth Alliance, led by Peter Daszak, received an extra $7.5 million from the NIH in August 2020. Despite the enormous conflict of interest that Daszak himself eventually had to acknowledge due to constant pressure, the latter—a British zoologist, consultant, and public expert on disease ecology, particularly zoonoses—became a member of the World Health Organization team assigned to look into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China.