Dr. Anthony Fauci responded Wednesday to a recent clip of Rand Paul saying that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director was “unwilling” to look at data that supported the reopening of schools.
“I think we better get our facts straight,” Fauci told McCallum in response to Paul’s suggestions that Fauci was “unwilling” to look at data on coronavirus transmission in schools. “First of all, that is totally incorrect that I refused to look at the data,” Fauci said, “I looked at all the data.”
During Paul’s Nov. 30 appearance on MacCallum’s show, Paul said, “When I tried to get Dr. Fauci to look at the data six months ago on children, the data from Europe, where they were keeping schools open and they did not have surges, he was unwilling to look at it. He was so overly cautious that he wanted to keep schools closed.”
“I have been saying for a considerable period of time that we should have as our default position getting the children back to school or keeping them in school,” Fauci told MacCallum during the interview. “So there is no difference there. And when you say ‘locked down,’ you’ve got to be careful. There are mitigation things that you do, that’s wearing of masks, keeping distances, avoiding congregate settings, that isn’t really locking down. It is doing some fundamental basic public health measures that is certainly short of locking down,” he added.
During a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Fauci told ABC anchor Martha Raddatz that public health officials are recommending to “close the bars and keep the schools open.”
“If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all. Not like one would have suspected,” Fauci also said.
“Dr. Fauci, every day, virtually every day, we seem to hear from you things we can’t do. But, when you are asked can we go back to school, I don’t hear much certitude at all. I hear ‘well, maybe it depends.’ All of this body of evidence about schools around the world shows there’s no surge,” Paul said, during a Senate hearing in June.
“I feel very strongly we need to do whatever we can to get the children back to school,” Fauci responded.