Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has frequently criticized the extended lockdown strategy and Dr. Anthony Fauci, denounced the current spate of lockdowns as a “big mistake” for what they have done to the U.S. economy and society at large.
Speaking on the “Fox News Rundown” podcast on Wednesday, Paul said that the lockdowns have caused tremendous damage and did little to curtail the actual virus. For example, Paul noted that states with lockdowns saw spikes in cases alongside states that didn’t have lockdowns.
“We’ve seen surges in coronaviruses in the midst of lockdown,” Paul said, as reported by Fox News. “New York had a lockdown and had 30,000 people die. New York had the worst death rate of any place in the world amid a lockdown, so perhaps a lockdown didn’t do any good and perhaps a lockdown killed our economy, but didn’t do anything to stem the tide of the virus. So I see nothing to be admired in New York’s lockdown.”
“I see a mountain of people who died, particularly in the nursing homes,” Paul continued. “I don’t think the lockdown did them any good. I think it killed the economy, but didn’t do any good for trying to contain the virus.”
As states continue reopening, Paul said that individuals should be assessing their own risk and acting accordingly.
“We need to put it in context [that] under age 45, this disease [COVID-19] we’re looking at is less dangerous than the seasonal flu,” Paul said. “Above age 45, it’s more dangerous than the seasonal flu. If you’re in your 80s and you’re in a nursing home, we need to do all kinds of things to try to protect you, but I don’t think that involves shutting down the economy. I think that involves other precautions.”
Simultaneously, Paul noted that tens of thousands of people undergo chemotherapy every year, “but we don’t tell the whole country to wear masks because you might give a virus to people who are in chemotherapy.”
“What we do is people on chemotherapy try to be very cautious, to stay away from children with infectious diseases or others who might transmit it, but we don’t shut the entire economy down, even though there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people with depressed immune systems,” Paul stated. “So I think we’ve made a big mistake in the lockdown. We’ve crippled the economy, but I don’t know that we’ve done much to the virus.”
Rand Paul has previously criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that his policies “emasculated” the U.S. economy and medical system based on flimsy models.
“Fauci and company have relied on models that were later found to be deficient,” he wrote in a previous op-ed. “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.”
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