July 29, 2026 / 7:46 PM EDT
/ CBS News
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The former White House coordinator of the COVID Task Force says the contentious Senate hearing that put Dr. Anthony Fauci and his diary under scrutiny shows there is still "persistent anger" over the government's handling of the pandemic.In an interview on CBS News' "The Takeout," Dr. Deborah Birx said she thought Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who was Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor during the pandemic, "got it the most right for all of us." He wondered, she said, "Did I get the balance right between saving lives and preserving people's livelihoods?" "That is a very deep question, and I think what you heard today is still persistent anger over that question not being answered adequately for most Americans," Birx told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett."We've got to get to that answer, and we have to have a better way forward than this," Birx said.And Fauci, she said, is probably at the center of questions about this because he served during both the Trump and Biden administrations, and people on the left and right still harbor deep disagreements about how each side addressed COVID.Six years after the pandemic, one of the enduring questions is whether the coronavirus originated in an animal in a wet market in Wuhan, China, or emerged from a lab there. Senators asked Fauci repeatedly about this Wednesday, but he invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to all questions during the hearing. Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee, subpoenaed Fauci to appear before the committee as part of the panel's investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
