Friday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) explained why he would not get the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Kentucky Republican senator maintained he already had the virus and therefore had immunity. He also criticized National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci for his approach to vaccinations, which does not account for those that already had the virus.
Partial transcript as follows:
CARLSON: So will you just clarify, as a physician, in a sentence or two, how people who have recovered from COVID that many tens of millions who have should feel about their chances of getting re-infected?
PAUL: Well, people need to understand that vaccines — the science of vaccines is based on the science of natural infection. What they’re trying to do with a vaccine is to simulate and get the same response that you get or better with a natural infection.
Some diseases like measles, when you get them, you actually have long — lifelong immunity. If you get vaccinated after a couple of decades, you need a booster. So actually, natural infection is actually better than the vaccine in some ways for measles.
Now, this isn’t an argument against being vaccinated. It just happens to be if you’ve got the measles, you’ve got lifelong immunity. Smallpox was the same way. But it’s not an argument for getting smallpox.
With COVID, we don’t know yet. But they say all the time is you don’t know how long you’ll be immune. Well, I can look right back at you and say I don’t know how long the vaccine will work. They’re already talking about a booster.
When Dr. Fauci came before the committee, and we asked him how many of those were vaccinated already have the disease? He has no earthly idea. They’re not even counting them.
Even as good scientists would say — we would — we should look and see whether those who’ve already been vaccinated are somehow responding differently. I did see one study that showed that if you’ve already had the disease, you get a vaccine, you get a thousand times greater response.
Now, maybe that means a thousand times better, or maybe that means you’re more likely to get symptoms and side effects. So I don’t think it’s been studied thoroughly.
I do know that in Israel, there was a study recently, and it showed that those who were vaccinated and those who were infected naturally had about the same possibility of being re-infected — pretty small.
CARLSON: I’m a little confused by this. I mean, if your job is to promote and then disseminate the vaccine and compel people to take it, which is what we are doing. College students can’t go back to school without it, so you’re forcing this on people.
Isn’t it your moral obligation to find out what the potential harms are? What population should get it? Which shouldn’t get it? Why are they treating everyone the same and refusing to ask obvious questions?
PAUL: Well, this a huge public policy or public health question. In India, they don’t have enough vaccines. So if Dr. Fauci is advising the world, which he seems to want to do, what should he tell them there? Should they give the vaccine to people who already had it? Or should they save the vaccine for those who haven’t had it?
So this is a profoundly important question for a country that has a billion people and might have 200 million vaccines. Should they waste the vaccine, and people have already gotten it? The Science says no, but Dr. Fauci says, no, we’re all lemmings. Submit. It’s more about uniformity of submission and less about science.
CARLSON: These people are scary. And I appreciate your asking obvious questions, and thank heaven, you’re a physician. You still have a right to do that, I suppose.
Senator Rand Paul —
PAUL: For now.
CARLSON: For Now. Good to see you. Thank you.
PAUL: Thank you.
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