Fauci Refuses to Say He Erred in Urging Schools to Close During Covid

EXCERPT:

KEILAR: “Yeah. You know, I do want to press you on this, because as a parent of school-aged children myself, and with the threat of another potential pandemic, I think that’s one of the things we've discussed, that this could happen again. You know, that’s an important question. That is about the future --“
FAUCI: “Right.”
KEILAR: “-- what we should do with school closures. Do you -- do you think that this could have been handled better and that there would have been a way to keep schools open and mitigate the risk better?”
FAUCI: “You know, the answer is we -- we have to be humble and modest. We always can do better, always. And that’s the reason why you continually look about lessons learned. You know, the idea about getting masks and getting masks worn in school, no doubt masks make a difference. Vaccinations are going to really make a big, big difference. And I think a combination of these things hopefully sometime in the future, we cannot only get the kids back to school, but we can get rid of the masking situation. We've got to do it in a step by step fashion. But you’re absolutely right, we've always got to examine what we've done, and try and see next time and maybe even as we’re living through it now do better and better. We -- we can’t assume that we have done things perfectly. That’s for sure.”
KEILAR: “We saw so many schools do different things. And I wonder if you look back on some of the schools that for instance, they opened sooner, but took those mitigation efforts, the masks, maybe they split the class in half so there was a morning and an afternoon so they could distance. I mean, is that something now, as you look back, you say maybe that was a better route?”
FAUCI: “Possibly, yes. And I think that’s the reason why you've always got to look back and see what worked and see what did not work to be prepared for the next time. But again, you know, viruses sometimes act differently. I mean, not every virus is going to be in the situation where it will have the same impact on schoolchildren as other viruses do. So you've got to not only have lessons learned from the past, but make sure you extrapolate that to what you’re dealing with in the present. Bottom line, you can always learn more than you know right now.”