Rand Paul Was Right About Covid
Few were so hated and so vindicated.
The post Rand Paul Was Right About Covid appeared first on The American Conservative.
Rand Paul Was Right About Covid
Few were so hated and so vindicated.
Nearly three years ago this month, Anthony Fauci said to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), “Senator Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about.”
Paul had said there was evidence that the National Institute of Health had funded gain-of-function research at a research lab in Wuhan, China.
“I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, senator,” Fauci would add. “And if anybody’s lying here, senator, it is you.”
It was one of their most fiery exchanges. In the following weeks and months, Paul would not relent.
Fauci accused Paul of just fundraising. CNN’s Brianna Keilar called Paul an “ass.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) defended Fauci from Paul’s supposedly mean-spirited questioning, “Thank you for calling out this agenda for what it is: an attempt to score political points, to build a political power base around the denial of science and around personal attacks on you and your family.”
Today, the NIH admits U.S. taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan. Even Fauci now admits it’s not a conspiracy theory.
Paul knew this. He wasn’t being crazy or rude. Unlike most, he was studying.
The senator was attacked at the time when he said social distancing didn’t work. In January, Fauci acknowledged that the policy “sort of just appeared” and was not based on any science. Paul was bashed when he said those who had already had Covid had natural immunity and didn’t need vaccinating. Today, the CDC even admits this. Paul was lectured when he said cloth masks were mostly theater and didn’t work as well as N95 masks. The CDC now admits this too. Paul was ridiculed for saying schools should be reopened, kids had the lowest risk, and the lockdowns could do far more damage to children than the virus. By March of this year, even the New York Times could conclude, “Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.”
There are more examples. But these alone are worthy of major discussion.
One many don’t want to have—won’t have.
Throughout the pandemic, legacy media considered it their duty to parrot and protect government policy as unquestionable and infallible. Many politicians did the same. So did entertainment.
The cult of Fauci that arose in that time made him into a devotional prayer candle. The pop star and Disney actress Olivia Rodrigo joined Fauci at a White House press briefing to read his fan mail tweets.
America had split between the good and intelligent people who understood and obeyed “The Science” and the bad half that did not. As an unorthodox libertarian Republican who was the son of Ron Paul and accustomed to kicking up a storm, elites had decided that Rand Paul was the bad half’s leader, assuming his outrageous questioning of Saint Fauci and pandemic pieties were the proof.
They never considered he might be right.
Now that Paul has been shown to be right about so many of his critiques of Covid policy, his critics don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to say that Anthony Fauci was ever wrong. That any of his or the CDC’s policies were ever wrong. They certainly don’t want to say that they were wrong.
But far more so, they never want to say that Rand Paul was right. Ever. They can’t.
But he was, and while the Covid cultists were too busy circling their wagons each day to defend the tribe of officialdom, impervious to challenge or reason—what they accuse MAGA of—they inoculated themselves from some of the most basic common sense policy considerations.
After all, President Barack Obama once froze the funding of gain-of-function research for reasons not unlike Rand Paul’s questioning of it. (Just ask The Science.)
How much of the Covid-19 pandemic debate was out of genuine concern for public health and safety? How much of it was just more of the crude mindless tribalism that preceded the pandemic and came out arguably stronger on the other end?
You can ask all of the same experts and leaders who got it so wrong, who will perpetually have an audience of fellow travelers who also got it wrong, the whole lot of them still trying to rationalize the madness they imposed on their country.
Or you could just ask the guy who knew exactly what he was talking about the whole time.
The post Rand Paul Was Right About Covid appeared first on The American Conservative.