Top health officials are back on Capitol Hill today answering questions from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee about COVID-19. The hearing comes a day after the United States exceeded the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) didn’t pay much attention to the death toll, instead he questioned whether things should have been locked down at all. It’s widely believed if the country didn’t practice mitigation efforts the death toll would be significantly higher. But here’s what Paul said:
“Do you have any second thoughts about your mitigation recommendations considering the evidence that despite everything we’ve done in the U.S. our death rate is essentially worse than Sweden, equivalent to the less-developed world that is unable to do any of the things that you’ve been promoting. Do you have any second thoughts? Are you willing to look at the data that countries that did very little actually have a lower death rate than the United States?”
Things started to get heated as Paul added this:
“You’ve been a big fan of Cuomo and the shutdown in New York, you’ve lauded New York for their policy. New York had the higest death rate in the world. How can we possibly be jumping up and down saying Cuomo did a great job. He had the worst death rate in the world.”
But Fauci shot Paul down saying:
“No, you misconstrued that, Senator. And you’ve done that repetitively in the past. Right now if you look at what’s going on right now to get their test positivity 1% or less is because they are looking at the guidelines that we put together on the task force…”
Paul then suggested to the nation’s top infectious disease specialist that perhaps “community immunity” is the reason for a low amount of cases in New York. To which Fauci replied:
“I challenge that… This happens with Senator Rand all the time, you are not listening to what the director of the CDC said.”
Watch the full exchange above.