Fauci admits school closures were not a good idea
LAUSD school board member Nick Melvoin joins Fox & Friends to weigh in after Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that keeping schools closed for a year wasn't a good idea and discusses Los Angeles' move to ban smartphones during the school day.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic response, was hospitalized earlier this month with West Nile virus (WNV), according to a report citing his spokesperson.
Fauci, 83, was hospitalized for six days before returning home, where he is now recovering, The Washington Post reports.
The nation's former top infectious disease official is expected to make a full recovery from the virus, which is most commonly transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Fauci denies trying to suppress theory about origin of COVID-19 lab leak
Former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci was hospitalized earlier this month with West Nile virus and is now recovering at home, according to a report. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images, main, E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images, top right, NIH-NIAID/IMAGE POINT FR/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images, bottom right).
The virus first entered the U.S. in 1999 and has become the leading cause of mosquito-borne illness in the country, according to the CDC.
Symptoms include fever, headache, body aches, vomiting, diarrhea, or rash, although the vast majority (about 80%) of people who contract WNV do not experience any symptoms. There are no vaccines or treatments for the virus.
In most cases, the virus is spread when Culex mosquitoes bite infected birds and then spread to people and other animals, according to the CDC website. More than 1,800 people were hospitalized with the virus last year in the U.S., resulting in 182 deaths, according to CDC data.
Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and was a leading figure in the coronavirus response teams of both former President Trump and President Biden. Before retiring, he had worked for more than 50 years in the American public health sector, advising every president since former President Reagan.
THIS WILL BE THE END OF FAUCI'S NIH AS WE KNOW IT
Dr. Fauci is sworn in before testifying before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in the Rayburn House Office Building on June 3, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Fauci was a frequent guest on cable news, prime-time television, late-night talk shows and podcasts, offering his medical advice throughout the pandemic. Over time, he became a politically divisive figure on both the left and right over issues such as masks, lockdown policies and the origins of COVID-19.
He famously clashed with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in committee hearings on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and whether his department within the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research.
Paul has claimed that government officials from 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus like COVID-19. These officials, Paul says, knew that the Chinese lab was planning to create a virus similar to COVID-19, and none of them disclosed this plan to the public.
In June, during testimony before the House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, he denied attempting to suppress the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic began as a result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China. The subcommittee reviewed classified State Department records that members said “credibly suggest” that COVID-19 originated from a “laboratory-related accident in Wuhan, China” and that the Chinese Communist Party “attempted to cover up the lab leak.”
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Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arrive to participate in the regular White House COVID-19 Response Team call with the National Governors Association in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus, Monday, Dec. 27, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Additionally, Fauci also said that no controlled trials had been conducted to justify a six-foot social distancing rule and defended vaccine mandates for students, employees and the military by stating, “Vaccines save lives. It's very, very clear that vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions around the world.”
“At first, it clearly prevented infection in a certain percentage of people, but the durability of its ability to prevent infection was not long, it was measured in months,” he added.
Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
