Join WhatsApp Channel
Join Telegram ChannelFauci Admits School Closures Wasn't a Good Idea
LAUSD School Board Member Nick Melvoin joins Fox & Friends to weigh in after Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted keeping schools closed for a year wasn't a good idea and discusses Los Angeles' decision to ban smartphones during the school day.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, was hospitalized earlier this month with West Nile virus (WNV), according to a report citing his spokesperson.
Fauci, 83, was hospitalized for six days before returning home where he is currently recovering, the Washington Post reports.
The country's former top infectious disease official is expected to make a full recovery from the virus, which is most often transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
FAUCI DENIES SEEKING TO SUPPRESS COVID-19 LAB LEAK ORIGIN THEORY
Former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci was hospitalized earlier this month with West Nile virus and is currently recovering at home, according to a report. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images, main image, E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images, top right, NIH-NIAID/IMAGE POINT FR/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images, bottom right.)
The virus first entered the United States in 1999 and has become the leading cause of mosquito-borne illness in the country, according to the CDC.
Symptoms include fever, headache, body aches, vomiting, diarrhea, or rash, although the vast majority (about 80%) of people who get West Nile virus have no symptoms. There is no vaccine or treatment for the virus.
In most cases, the virus spreads when Culex mosquitoes bite infected birds and then people and other animals, according to the CDC website. More than 1,800 people were hospitalized with the virus last year in the United States, resulting in 182 deaths, according to CDC data.
Fauci was the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and was a leading figure in former President Trump and President Biden's coronavirus response teams. Before his retirement, he worked for more than 50 years in the American public health sector, advising every president since former President Reagan.
THIS WILL BE THE END OF FAUCI'S NIH AS WE KNOW IT
Dr. Fauci is sworn in before testifying before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic at the Rayburn House Office Building on June 3, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Dr. Fauci was a regular guest on 24-hour news, prime-time television, late-night shows and podcasts, offering his medical advice throughout the pandemic. Over time, he became a politically divisive figure on the left and right on issues such as masks, lockdown policies and the origins of COVID-19.
He famously clashed with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., during committee hearings on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and whether his department within the National Institutes of Health was funding gain-of-function research.
Paul said government officials from 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus similar to COVID-19. Those officials, Paul said, knew that the Chinese lab was proposing to create a virus similar to COVID-19 and none of them disclosed that plan to the public.
In June, he denied trying to suppress the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic began as a result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, during testimony before the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The subcommittee reviewed classified State Department documents that its members said “credibly suggest” that COVID-19 originated from a “laboratory-related accident in Wuhan, China” and that the Chinese Communist Party “attempted to cover up the lab leak.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arrive to participate in the White House COVID-19 Response Team's regularly scheduled call with the National Governors Association in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus, Monday, Dec. 27, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Additionally, Fauci also said there have been no controlled trials to support a six-foot social distancing rule and he defended the vaccine mandate for students, employees and the military, saying, “Vaccines save lives. It’s very, very clear that vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people around the world.”
“Initially, it clearly prevented infection in a certain percentage of people, but the durability of its ability to prevent infection was not long. It was measured in months,” he added.
Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.