In closed-door congressional testimony, former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci said that federal social distancing guidance during the pandemic was likely not based on any data, and conceded that the lab leak hypothesis of COVID-19’s origins isn’t a conspiracy theory.
Fauci’s comments came during the second of two seven-hour rounds of transcribed, but non-public, testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
The repeated federal recommendation that people keep six feet of distance between themselves and others “sort of just appeared,” said Fauci—the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden—to lawmakers yesterday, according to a statement released today from the committee’s Chairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R–Ohio).
The feds’ oft-repeated six-foot rule informed numerous state and local pandemic restrictions, including mask mandates and capacity limitations at businesses. Washington, D.C.’s mask mandate, for instance, required people to wear masks outside when one couldn’t reliably keep six feet away from other people.
Fauci also reportedly told lawmakers yesterday that the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory.
Early in the pandemic, Fauci and other National Institute of Health (NIH) officials pushed researchers to produce a paper downplaying the possibility COVID-19 had man-made origins.
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