Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) continued his ongoing spar with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a USA Today op-ed he co-wrote with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), blasting Fauci’s alleged doom and gloom policies for destroying the American economy and countless lives.
Though Paul and Biggs respect Dr. Fauci’s expertise on infectious diseases and his medial opinions, the pair were severely critical of Fauci for crafting his entire COVID-19 strategy off of flimsy models that turned out to be false, such as the U.K. Imperial College model from disgraced professor Neil Ferguson that warned of 2.2 million deaths in the United States with no mitigation.
“Fauci and company have relied on models that were later found to be deficient,” the op-ed states. “He even has suggested that he can’t rely on any of the models, especially if the underlying assumptions are wrong. Yet, Fauci persists in advocating policies that have emasculated the medical care system and ruined the economy.”
Despite these glaring errors, Fauci has not changed his tune and instead has gone full pedal-to-the-metal in his dire predictions. Just last week, when testifying before the senate, Fauci warned of “needless suffering and death” if the United States reopened too quickly, and even suggested schools remain closed through the fall, which prompted Paul to call him out at the time.
“I think that … we’re going to have a national one-size-fits-all approach — nobody’s going to go to school, is kind of ridiculous,” Paul told Fauci. “We really ought to be doing it school district by school district, and the power needs to be dispersed because people make wrong predictions.”
“We ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what’s best for the economy,” Paul continued. “And, as much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all. I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make the decision. We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other sides saying that there’s not going to be a surge, and we can safely open the economy and the facts will bear this out.”
In the op-ed for USA Today, Paul and Biggs take particular issue with Fauci’s almost callous coldness in the face of the economic and social destruction caused by the lockdown, something they say he merely dismissed as “inconvenient” with no regard for the pain that people were experiencing.
“How come he is so understated when it comes to compassion for the people whose lives have been wrecked by his policies but so demonstrative when trying to scare the American people?” the op-ed wonders aloud. “Unbelievably, Fauci has suggested that the economic and societal impacts of policies for which he has advocated were not considered when he offered his advice.”
Aside from the economic destruction (which is bad enough), Paul and Biggs cite the many public health issues that have arisen from the lockdowns, which goes beyond just suicides and alcoholism and into “hospitals and medical groups having to close because they couldn’t treat patients.”
“As a medical bureaucrat in far-away Washington, perhaps he cannot empathize with the millions of Americans who have already closed down their businesses or are poised to lose them and their life savings, and who have seen their retirement funds depleted as the economy soured,” the op-ed asserts. “Maybe he is simply oblivious to the health problems that inure when a person is one of more than 33 million Americans who have lost their job.”
The op-ed concludes with a call for Fauci and Dr. Birx to stop pressuring states into remaining closed while trusting Americans to make prudent decisions with their freedom.
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