Retiring National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins told Fox News on Friday that he was never asked to fire his nationally-recognized subordinate Anthony Fauci, …
Retiring National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins told Fox News on Friday that he was never asked to fire his nationally-recognized subordinate Anthony Fauci, despite the NIAID director’s frequent clashes with Trump administration officials over federal coronavirus mitigation policy. He also criticized former Trump coronavirus task force member Dr. Scott Atlas for touting herd immunity as a potential strategy for dealing with the pandemic. Collins,71, will leave the agency on Sunday after more than a decade in its top position. He told «Your World» that the new omicron variant of coronavirus will lead to a «tough couple of months» for the United States, based on its higher transmissibility than what he called the «original Wuhan virus» strain. In a press release on Friday, Chairman James Clyburn, D-S.C., and the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis wrote that Collins expressed «deep concerns about the herd immunity strategy being advocated by these ‘fringe epidemiologists’ and in an October 2020 email, called for «a quick and devastating published take down» of the herd immunity strategy known as «The Great Barrington Declaration.
