During a Wednesday Senate hearing on the ongoing U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, things got reasonably heated between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Senator Rand Paul.
The senator from Kentucky, who is himself a medical doctor, opened his question by stating that, originally, "government officials were frank enough to admit that the goal of mitigation measures, aka," lockdown, "was to flatten the curve." He then argued that "flattening the curve" has since "morphed into an illusion that with a pandemic we could alter the trajectory of the pandemic."
Compared to Sweden, which prevented a lockdown, Rand Paul cited New York and New Jersey as the nation's highest infection spikes. "Before noting to Dr. Fauci," today you said you are not for economic lockdown, but your mitigation recommendations from dating to baseball to restaurants to movie theaters have led to this financial lockdown, "he rhetorically asked if" man is really able to control the path of a virus through crowd control.
"Our death rate is basically higher than Sweden, equal to the less developed world that is unable to do any of the stuff you have been encouraging," he pointedly noted, asking, "Do you have any second thoughts?" before finally arriving at the issue. Are you able to look at the evidence that there is a lower mortality rate for countries that did very little than the United States?
Senator Paul hit back, "You have been a huge fan of Cuomo and the shutdown in New York." "You have praised New York for its strategy. In New York, the world's highest death rate has been reported. How do you jump up and down and say that Cuomo has done a fine job?
