Anthony Fauci now says he never recommended the lockdowns

"First of all, I didn’t recommend locking anything down". These words are not from a critic of more coercive measures to fight the pandemic, but from the president's chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci.

If it seems that these words cannot belong to Fauci, it is because at the time the immunologist did recommend closing the country. The TownHall media outlet has composed a video in which he is seen in the recent interview given to The Hill, and is also seen in 2020 stating the position he held at the time:

Nostalgia for the Chinese dictatorship

He then said, "When it became clear that we had community spread in the country … I recommended to the president that we shut the country down. That was a very difficult decision, because I knew it would have serious economic consequences, which it did".

He was very clear at the time: "There was no way to stop the explosive spread that we knew would occur if we didn’t do that". Moreover, "And unfortunately, since we actually did not shut down completely—the way China did, the way Korea did, the way Taiwan did—we actually did see spread even though we shut down".

Indeed, the physician and politician regretted that the confinement had not been complete: "Had we known back then the insidious nature of spread in the community, there would have been much more of an alarm and there would have been much much more stringent restrictions in the sense of very very heavy encouraging people to wear masks, physical distancing and what have you".

The biggest cheerleader of confinements

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul reminds Fauci's long-held position, and says that he was "the biggest cheerleader" for the lockdowns. And he offers as proof an article written by economist Jeffrey A. Tucker for the Brownstone Institute.