Retiring National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday defended COVID lockdowns and said they have done no irreparable damage in an interview with FOX News host Neil Cavuto. Fauci questioned data from the 'Wall Street Journal' that showed states that did not lock down as much as others fared better. <blockquote>CAVUTO: But, in retrospect, Doctor, do you regret that it went too far, whatever your original intentions were, and it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback here, but that it went too far, that, particularly for kids who couldn't go to school, except remotely, that it's forever damaged them? FAUCI: Right. Well, I don't think it's forever irreparably damaged anyone. But I think, obviously, and you -- if you go back -- and people selectively, Neil, pull things out about me. I was also one of the people that said we have got to do everything we can to get the children back in school. Go back to some of the clips that you and I had on your own show, when I have said, that it's very important that we protect the children from the collateral effects of keeping them out of school. Go to the record. I have said that so many times, and yet there's a distortion. CAVUTO: So, if we had something, God forbid, like this again, Doctor -- I'm sorry -- that -- and the same ideas were bandied about, a shutdown, let's do things remotely, would you consider that? Do you think we should, as a country, consider that again? FAUCI: I think we should always learn lessons from the past, Neil. That is one of the things about medicine and science and public health that I have tried to do for my entire 50-year career, to be flexible and open-minded. So, if you look at things we may not have done perfectly or even not done well, you go back and you try to learn from that. Maybe people can learn that, if they would encourage people to get vaccinated, we may not have had so many deaths. So I think the people who criticize me should talk about their own reluctance to promote vaccination. That's the point that I would make in rebuke of that. CAVUTO: So, Doctor, when The Wall Street Journal took a look at the states that locked down and states that didn't lock down nearly so much, and concluded, we now know that states that locked down fared no better and sometimes worse than those states that didn't, what do you think of that? FAUCI: You know, I really question those data, Neil. I'm sorry. There are many people who statistically looked at those data and disagreed with that, because, when you look at lockdown, there's so many other things that go along with that. And there's been a lot of pushback on that type of a conclusion, that states that locked down did as well or better than states that didn't I think that there's a lot of debate about that. </blockquote>