Dr. Anthony Fauci struck a defensive tone during a recent interview reflecting on his and the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, admitting that mistakes were made despite his best efforts.
"Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did," Fauci said when asked about the consequences of "heavy-handed" public health policies in a New York Times interview published Tuesday. "I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the CDC’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that. But I never criticized the people who had to make the decisions one way or the other."
The response was just one of several in which Fauci defended his guidance during the pandemic, pushing back against critics who have accused him of being wrong about everything from masks to how effective vaccines would be.
