November 13, 2020, 7:13 am
As COVID-19 cases in the United States are at an all-time high — like usual — Republican Senator and questionable doctor Rand Paul is telling people who have had the virus to “throw away” their masks.
Advertisement
Hide
Paul went on Fox News to talk about the pandemic and complain about Dr. Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the United States, who he says “tends to gloss over the science” when it comes to the novel coronavirus.
Advertisement
Hide
Specifically, Paul and Fauci have disagreed in the past over Paul’s insistence that we could achieve herd immunity with only 40% of the population infected and that children have some innate immunity to the disease. In both scenarios, Fauci said we just don’t have enough information yet to make such bold and risky assumptions.
And now Paul is making yet another risky assumption — that people who have gotten COVID-19 are forever immune.
Advertisement
Hide
“We have 11 million people in our country who have already had COVID,” the physician said. “We should tell them to celebrate. We should tell them to throw away their masks, go to restaurants, live again, because these people are now immune.”
Advertisement
Hide
However, Paul’s claims of immunity are not accurate.
While, again, there is still so much we don’t know about the virus, there have been cases of reinfection around the world. People who have tested positive for COVID-19, suffered through symptoms of the disease, and tested negative multiple times under the care of doctors have come down with it again weeks or months later.
“I don’t know why he would say that. There is no evidence that if you’ve been infected by COVID-19 that you’re immune from reinfection for any period of time,” Dr. Vin Gupta said on MSNBC in response to Paul’s comments. “We have a 25-year-old in Nevada — otherwise healthy, within six weeks of his first infection, got reinfected, has more severe symptoms the second time around. So that is shameful on the part of Senator Rand Paul.”
Advertisement
Hide
The Centers for Disease Control back up Gupta’s statement, with their official stance currently being that there is no reason to believe anyone has longterm immunity from COVID-19 — which means if survivors of the disease throw out their masks and go back to their pre-pandemic lives, they could not only be reinfected with the virus themselves, they could just as easily spread it to others.
People were less than thrilled with Paul’s careless comments, especially during a time when the country is so divided and pandemic precautions have become seen as bipartisan thanks to Republican leaders following Trump’s lead throughout the year and downplaying the severity of what we’re up against.
Advertisement
Hide
Advertisement
Hide
Advertisement
Hide
A Senator telling 11 million Americans to throw out their masks in the middle of a pandemic where the virus in question is spread through respiratory droplets is so astoundingly irresponsible, it’s almost impossible to believe this is the world we are currently living in. And it’s even more difficult to see how we’ll find a way out of this pandemic, if people actually continue to listen to him.
*First Published: November 13, 2020, 7:13 am
0 Comments