A top official at Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was “very impressed” by how China responded to the COVID-19 outbreak after a 2020 visit to Beijing, China, according to Fauci’s Nov. 23 deposition.
A transcript of the seven-hour deposition, released Wednesday by Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who is leading the deposition alongside Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry of Louisiana, confirmed that H. Clifford Lane, NIAID Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects, admired how China managed the virus. Lane made the observation during a World Health Organization expedition in February 2020 to plan a response to the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a 2020 NIAID article titled “NIAID’s Lane Discusses WHO COVID-19 Mission To China.”
“Dr. Lane was very impressed about how from a clinical public health standpoint, the Chinese were handling the isolation, the contract tracing, the building of facilities to take care of people, and that’s what I believe he meant when he said were managing this in a very structured, organized way,” Fauci said, according to the transcript.
Fauci’s deposition was part of a larger lawsuit over how top Biden officials aided social media companies to censor content about COVID-19 in 2020. Former Senior COVID-19 Advisor Andrew Slavitt and former Press Secretary Jenn Psaki are also scheduled to be deposed.
One of Fauci’s deputies joined a WHO delegation to China in February of 2020, and in talking to Fauci afterwards, was impressed with how the Chinese “were handling the isolation, the contact tracing, the building of facilities to take care of people..” pic.twitter.com/6uxlxEpFxX
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) December 5, 2022
The line of questioning drew from the 2020 NIAID article in which Lane stated that the United States “may have to go to as extreme a degree of social distancing to help bring our outbreak under control.”
China was quick to impose strict lockdown policies early in 2020 which included quarantining nearly 46 million people within a matter of weeks. The country also adopted surveillance and tracking measures and shut down businesses and schools, as well as enforced mask mandates outdoors.
The WHO report, published in February 2020, credited China’s strict contact tracing and surveillance methods in its recommendation.
“Fundamental to these measures is extremely proactive surveillance to immediately detect cases, very rapid diagnosis and immediate case isolation, rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts, and an exceptionally high degree population understanding and acceptance of these measures,” the report read.
Fauci confirmed in the deposition that Lane “did discuss with [him] that the Chinese had a very organized way of trying to contain the spread in Wuhan and elsewhere.” (RELATED: The Questions Anthony Fauci Should Have Been Asked At His Last Press Briefing)
“I believe Dr. Lane came to the conclusion that when you have a widespread respiratory disease that a very common and effective way to curtail the rapid spread of the disease is by implementing social distancing measures,” Fauci said.
Fauci also noted that Lane “is a very astute clinician, and [he had] every reason to believe that his evaluation of the situation was accurate and correct.”
Fauci later admitted that the lockdowns imposed by China were “extreme,” but persisted that “social distancing would be very important when you have a respiratory virus that is spreading widely through a community causing an extraordinary amount of suffering and death,” according to the transcript.
“When you get to that extreme, social distancing, even by somewhat difficult means, is warranted to save lives,” Fauci claimed.
The NIAID, Schmitt and Landry did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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