(Headline USA) Dr. Anthony Fauci said he regrets not pushing mask mandates sooner during the pandemic and laughed off questions about the lab leak theory during a documentary released this week.
Fauci allowed PBS to follow him around throughout 2021 and 2022 as he led President Joe Biden’s response to the pandemic. During one interview, Fauci blasted Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been very critical of his role in the National Institutes of Health and the agency’s funding of gain-of-function research. Fauci claimed Paul’s assertion that COVID-19 originated from gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China was unfounded, calling the theory “molecularly impossible.”
“Rand Paul was insidiously throwing into his suggestions that the work done in the Wuhan lab, funded by a small grant from NIH … created a virus that made COVID,” Fauci said. “The microbe that we were working on, not only was not SARS-CoV-2, it would be molecularly impossible for them to turn it into SARS-CoV-2. They were so different, it’s kind of like you have a Chevrolet and you got a motorcycle and you say, ‘I want to make that Chevrolet into the motorcycle.’”
Fauci then dismissed the lab leak theory as the product “hyper far-right conservative members of Congress.”
“People believe anything that somebody puts in front of them,” he said.
The lab leak theory has been validated by multiple government agencies, including the FBI, the Energy Department and the State Department.
During another interview in the documentary, Fauci said he regrets discouraging people from wearing masks during the very beginning of the pandemic.
“Maybe I should have done that,” he said when asked if he wished he had recommended mask mandates sooner. “Yeah, I was wrong.”
The documentary also shows Fauci crying at Biden’s inauguration.
Many of the interviews with Fauci were conducted in his multi-million dollar home, which was weirdly filled of memorabilia of himself, including throw pillows with his face on them and bobbleheads.
