Rand Paul to Dr. Fauci: History of pandemic science advice is “wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction”
“I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge and that we can safely open the economy and the facts will bear this out.”
Tuesday, members of the White House Task Force on Coronavirus testified before the Senate Health Committee. Specifically, their advise on the response and re-opening was questioned.
Most notably, was an exchange between Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Fauci. Sen. Paul questioned Fauci about the wisdom of keeping schools shut down, when children appear to be incredibly resistant and resilient with this particular virus. Sen. Paul also shot at Fauci, saying “I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge and that we can safely open the economy and the facts will bear this out.”
The exchange was civil, but to the point.
Watch:
Full transcript here:
Sen. Paul: Based on the idea that recovering Corona virus patients are developing immunity and that it can be beneficial as donated. Studies show that the recovering covet 19 patients from the asymptomatic to the very sick are showing significant antibody response. Studies show that SARS and MERS also viruses induce immunity for at least two to three years, and yet the media continues to report that we have no evidence that patients who survive coronavirus have immunity. I think actually the truth is the opposite. We have no evidence that survivors of coronavirus don’t have immunity and a great deal of evidence to suggest that they do. The question of immunity is linked to health policy and that workers who have gained immunity can be a strong part of our economic recovery.
The silver lining to so many infections in the meat processing industry is that a large portion of these workers now have immunity. Those workers should be reassured that they likely won’t get it again instead of being alarmed by me or courts, that there is no evidence of immunity. You’ve stated publicly that you’d bet at all that survivors of coronavirus have some form of immunity. Can you help set the record straight that the scientific record as is as being accumulated is supportive that infection with Corona virus likely leads to some form of immunity? Dr. Fauci, right?
Dr. Fauci: Yep. Thank you for the question, Senator Paul. Yes, you’re correct that I have said that given what we know about the recovery from virus such as coronaviruses in general or even any infectious disease, with very few exceptions, that when you have antibody present, it is very likely indicates a degree of protection. I think it’s in the semantics of how this is expressed. When you say has it been formally proven by longterm natural history studies, which is the only way that you can prove one, is it protected, which I said and would repeat is likely that it is, but also what is the degree or tighter of antibody that gives you that critical level of protection and what is the durability? As I’ve often said, you know, again, you can make a reasonable assumption that it would be protective but natural history studies over a period of months to a years will then tell you definitively it’s, that’s the case.
Sen. Paul: And I think that’s important because in all likelihood is a good way of putting it. The vast majority of these people have immunity instead of saying there is no evidence, you know, the who kind of fed into this by saying no evidence of immunity. And in reality there’s every evidence stacking up. And in fact a lot of the different studies have shown that it is very unlikely that you get it again in the short term. With regard to going back to school, one thing that was left out of that discussion is um, mortality. I mean, shouldn’t we at least be discussing what the mortality of children is? Um, this is for Dr. Fauci as well. You know, the mortality between zero and 18 in the New York data zero, it’s not going to be absolutely zero, but it almost approaches zero between 18 and 45. The mortality in New York was a 10 out of 100,000.
So really we do need to be thinking about that. We need to uh, observe with an open mind what went on in Sweden, where the kids kept going to school. The mortality per capita in Sweden is actually less than France, less than Italy, less than Spain, less than Belgium, less than the Netherlands, about the same as Switzerland. But basically I don’t think there’s anybody arguing that what happened in Sweden is an unacceptable result. I think people are intrigued by it and we should be, I don’t think any of us are certain when we do all these modelings, there’ve been more people wrong with modeling than right. We’re opening up a lot of economies around the, around the U S and I hope that people who are predicting doom and gloom and saying, Oh, we can’t do this, there’s going to be, the surge will admit that they were wrong.
If there isn’t a surge, because I think that’s what’s going to happen in rural States. We never really reached any sort of pandemic levels in Kentucky and other States. We have less deaths in Kentucky than we have in an average flu season. It’s not to say this isn’t deadly, but really outside of new England, we’ve had a relatively benign course for this virus nationwide and I think the one size fits all that we’re going to have a national strategy and nobody’s going to go to school is kind of ridiculous.
We really ought to be doing at school, district by school district and the power needs to be dispersed because people make wrong predictions and really the history of this, when we look back, we’ll be of wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction. Starting with Ferguson in England. So I think we ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what’s best for the economy and as much as I respect to Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end all.
I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge and that we can safely open the economy and the facts will bear this out. But if we keep kids out of school for another year, what’s going to happen is the poor and underprivileged kids who don’t have a parent that’s able to teach them at home are not going to learn for a full year. And I think we ought to look at the Swedish model and we got to look at letting our kids get back to school. I think it’s a huge mistake if we don’t open the schools in the fall. Thank you.
Dr. Fauci: Mr. Chairman, can I respond to that even though there are only 32 seconds left?
Chairman: Yes. And you might make it clear whether or not you suggested that we shouldn’t go back to school in the fall.
Dr. Fauci: Well, uh, first of all, uh, Senator Paul, thank you for your comments. I have never made myself out to be the end all and only voice in this. I’m a scientist, a physician and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence. There are a number of other people who come into that and give advice that are more related to the things that you spoke about, about the need to get the country back open again and economically. I don’t give advice about economic things. I don’t get advice about anything other than public health. So I wanted to respond to the second thing is that you use the word we should be humble about what we don’t know and I think that falls under the fact that we don’t know everything about this virus and we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children because the more and more we learn we’re seeing things about with this virus can do that we didn’t see from the studies in China or in Europe for example, right now children presenting with COVID-16 with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome.
I think we’ve got to be careful if we are not cavalier and thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects. So again, you’re right in the numbers that children in general do much, much better than adults and the elderly, and particularly those with underlying conditions. But I am very careful and hopefully humble and knowing that I don’t know everything about this disease. And that’s why I’m very reserved and making broad predictions. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Paul.
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Comments
Why do we let Lockdownistas impose higher standards of evidence for lifting the lockdowns than they used for imposing them?
There was never valid, scientific evidence that lockdowns, mask laws, or social distancing rules would have any impact on this disease. And there still isn’t.
Why are they running around like their hair is on fire over this? That’s easy enough to answer, the economy has to be destroyed prior to the election. This is the only way the Democrats can win this election, with a down and out “under class”.
The real statistics don’t support the sense of panic that is being forced on the country. The flu comes around every winter, the country doesn’t get shut down for the 3-4 months the flu season happens.
As for the statistics, the CDC admitted the numbers were inflated by as much as 25-35%. If they admit to that, then the real numbers are much higher. Since this “pandemic” started, all deaths have been blamed on COVID-19 if the virus is/was detected in the deceased, no matter how severe the underlying ailment was. 2020 is going to be know as the year no one died of any natural cause. There’s been WAY TOO MUCH of a sense of urgency and panic over this.
I think it was Mark Twain that said,…there’s lies, there’s damned lies, and then there’s statistics.
My main beef with Fauci is that he blindly accepted the Chinese data as relayed by the WHO. Which is why he mentioned at one briefing he didn’t think the Wuhan virus posed a serious threat to the US. The data was obviously a lie, but the January/early February timeframe the data coming from the ChiComs made this look no more serious than SARS. The SARS coronavirus never became a threat to US public health.
In fact researchers at the Wuhan Central Hospital did call the Wuhan Coronavirus as “SARS-like” in information circulated among the medical personnel at that hospital. But they knew it wasn’t identical to the SARS coronavirus, and in fact they didn’t know what exactly they were dealing with. One doctor at the Wuhan Central Hospital, a DR. Li Wenliang, decided the information needed to be more widely distributed and sent it to other colleagues. He never intended to make it public, just that the information they were learning about this mystery disease needed to be more widely shared within the medical community. But when authorities found out about what he was doing he was called in by both hospital and police authorities, berated, and forced to write a confession recanting his “lies” under threat of prosecution.
He was completely vindicated, as even the government was eventually forced to acknowledge, but it couldn’t have been much comfort as he died of this virus in early February.
So I am convinced we don’t know if the ChiComs have even yet gotten control of the Wuhan coronavirus. It isn’t as if the CCP doesn’t have a track record supporting my conviction. During the 2003-2004 SARS epidemic at least some of the infections were traced by to not one but two research labs, and when doctors in Beijing reported five SARS cases they were ordered by the government not to report any more cases.
The CHICOMs are following the same “Chernobyl pattern” that they followed then with respect to this outbreak. Doctors, journalists, and bloggers have been intimidated into silence or they’ve been disappeared. Some residents of Wuhan have been simply bribed into silence or been intimidated with threats similar to those used against Dr. Li.
Nothing that comes out of China can be trusted. Which causes me to question Dr. Fauci’s judgement.
Fer bog’s sake.
The point is to use the time to… build up contingencies, specify protocols, develop treatments, and find mitigations.
From “not ibuprophen, use acetominophin”, to learning respiratory virus management protocols, to … Dr. NY-guy reports 0 cases with his protocol, to … how about oxygen therapy vs. respirators, to…
No, it isn’t your job, Fascisti, to be deciding what and who are “essential.” It’s your job to be supporting and curating what and who people themselves find “essential.” Also beneficial, and just stupid fun.
No, the point is not perfect “safety” from one identified problem. The point is wrangling risks so we can do more stuff. We aren’t keeping people “alive” to keep them on a shelf, we’re keeping them breathing so they can pick off more life.
“We must destroy this villiage to save it.” was dumb in tha particular acutal war. It’s extra dumb when we’re destroying states, countries, n world economies — netting milions of lives — to “save”, er, several thousands of those same lives.
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