“When you have a divisiveness in society where every time you say something, you have X number of people with social media immediately looking to attack it,” Fauci claimed in an interview at a three-day convention called The Atlantic Festival. “That adds to the understandable confusion when you’re dealing with an evolving outbreak. So what you were saying specific to your question, of course, when you make recommendations, if the primary goal, when you’re dealing with a situation where the hospitals were being overrun in New York, intensive care units were being put in hallways, you have to do something that’s rather draconian. And sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral negative consequences.”

“Just like when you shut things down, even temporarily, it does have deleterious consequences on the economy, on the schoolchildren, you know that,” Fauci continue. “But you have to make a balance when you’re dealing with, we know the only way to stop something cold in its tracks is to try and shut things down. If you shut things down, just for the sake of it, that’s bad. But if you do it with the purpose of being able to regroup so that you can then open up in a more safe way, that’s the best way to do.”

An exhaustive Johns Hopkins University comparative analysis published in January found that strict lockdowns failed to significantly reduce Covid-related deaths.

“Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University,” the Washington Times reported. “The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies.”

“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the researchers wrote. Read more