Fauci Says If We Could Do It Again, COVID-19 Restrictions Would Be 'Much, Much More Stringent'

When asked what he would do differently if he could go back in time to the beginning of the pandemic, White House coronavirus advisor Anthony Fauci said that he would recommend "much, much more stringent restrictions" from the get-go.

"If I knew in 2020 what I know now, we would do a lot differently," said Fauci in an interview on Monday. "The insidious nature of spread in the community 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 encouragement of people to wear masks, physical distancing, what have you."

Fauci made these remarks during an interview on Rising, the news show I co-host for The Hill. When asked about the return of mask mandates in various parts of the country, Fauci conceded that the cloth masks that most people were required to wear indoors throughout the pandemic do not substantially prevent the transmission of COVID-19.