Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Monday categorized Dr. Anthony Fauci as a petty tyrant following the White House chief medical advisor failing to endorse indoor dining, even among those who have been vaccinated for the Chinese coronavirus.
“Fauci continues to ignore 100 years of vaccine science. His only real theme is ‘do what I say’ even when it makes no sense,” Paul said Monday. “If you’ve recovered or been vaccinated — go about your life. Eat, drink, work, open the schools. Enough with the petty tyrants!”:
The Kentucky Republican’s remark followed Fauci’s appearance on MSNBC, where he issued a warning to Americans who seek to participate in indoor dining.
“Drinking indoors, restaurants, and bars. Is that OK now?” host Mehdi Hasan asked Fauci.
“No, it’s still not ok for the simple reason that level of infection, the dynamics of infection in the community are still really disturbingly high,” the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director said, referencing a recent day where new infections totaled nearly 80,000.
“If you’re not vaccinated, please get vaccinated as soon as vaccine becomes available to you. And if you are vaccinated, please remember that you still have to be careful and not get involved in crowded situations particularly indoors where people are not wearing masks,” he continued.
“And for the time being, until we show definitively that a person who’s vaccinated does not get this subclinical infection and can spread to others, you should also continue to wear a mask,” he added.
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Fauci also appeared on CNN’s Situation Room, where host Wolf Blitzer asked, “What about indoor dining? Should I feel — I’m fully vaccinated, obviously, should I feel safe having dinner at an indoor restaurant?”
“You know, Wolf, I think what you need to do is you need to look at the level of infection in the community,” Fauci responded, reiterating that vaccinated individuals carry a lower risk but failing to fully endorse the concept of indoor dining:
It isn’t like before when you were not vaccinated and you had a lot of activity in the community and you went into an indoor restaurant where there was not [a] restriction on the number of people in a restaurant. Your risk would be up there. Whereas, now, the risk is not zero, but it’s extremely low. And what it’s going to be, Wolf, is that people are going to have to make a determination of what level of risk are they willing to take. And the one thing that we really do need to discuss and people need to understand that, that there are not absolutes here. If someone is not particularly risk-averse, gets vaccinated, and says, you know, I really do want to go to a restaurant and sit down and relax, and I know the risk is very low, but I’m willing to take that chance. If someone is very risk-averse, they’ll say, no, no I want to wait until the level of infection is way, way, way, way down in the community. Whereas, others might be a little bit different. But the point that can’t be lost in the discussion is that being vaccinated, fully vaccinated, you diminish, dramatically, the risk, and then it depends on your own personal decision.”
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On Monday, Fauci warned of “breakthrough” infections — infections occurring in vaccinated individuals — noting that no vaccine is “100 percent efficacious or effective.”
Paul has continued to question the government coronavirus restrictions public health leaders such as Fauci champion, calling for the end of “fearmongering.”