Sen. Rand Paul is a medical doctor and coronavirus survivor. He has even volunteered in a hospital amid the pandemic. Suffice it to say the libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican knows a thing or two about the coronavirus.
That didn’t stop people from melting down Tuesday after Paul questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci during Senate testimony on reopening schools.
“Shouldn’t we at least be discussing what the mortality of children is?” Paul asked Fauci, adding that “the mortality between [ages] 0 and 18 in New York approaches zero. … So, really, we do need to be thinking about that. We need to observe with an open mind what went on in Sweden, where the kids kept going to school.”
“I hope that people who are predicting doom and gloom and saying, ‘Oh, we can’t do this. There’s going to be the surge,’ will admit that they were wrong if there isn’t a surge. Because I think that’s what’s going to happen,” the senator continued, adding, “I think the ‘one size fits all,’ that we’re going to have a national strategy and nobody’s going to go to school, is kind of ridiculous. We really ought to be doing it school district by school district.”
“As much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all. I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision,” Paul concluded. “But if we keep kids out of school for another year, what’s going to happen is the poor and underprivileged kids … are not going to learn for a full year.”
You can watch the full exchange below:
Fauci, to his credit, responded to Paul’s concerns and questions rationally and respectfully. But media critics and left-wing commentators savaged the senator for even daring to ask such questions.
Democratic Virginia Rep. Don Beyer, who is not a doctor, called Paul “wrong,” “ignorant,” and “dangerous.” Ronald Klain, an adviser for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, twisted the senator’s words and snarked, “I can’t believe I live in a country where the nation’s leading infectious disease expert has to explain to a Senator that we ‘really out to be very careful … when it comes to children.'”
Meanwhile, many left-wing social media commentators descended into their typical nasty territory:
Watching Republicans cheer on Rand Paul “taking on” Dr. Fauci almost perfectly characterizes the anti-intellectual, anti-reason, anti-fact, and frankly degenerate state of the Republican Party.
— Devin Duke (@sirDukeDevin) May 12, 2020
Retweet if Rand Paul looks like a serial killer and should be removed from office pic.twitter.com/v4dyEGbUZx
— David Leavitt (@David_Leavitt) May 12, 2020
Honestly impressed by Rand Paul’s commitment to being a gigantic piece of shit literally all the time
— Jason (@longwall26) May 12, 2020
Still team Rand Paul’s neighbor.
— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) May 12, 2020
Paul, who seems to live rent-free in some of these people’s heads, knows what he’s talking about. His push to start considering reopening schools is a fair one supported by the data. Children are at very, very minimal risk from the coronavirus. And as long as schools remain closed, that places a tremendous burden on parents, particularly low-income parents, thus harshly limiting our ability to reopen other sectors of the economy.
This is misleading. Keeping schools closed indefinitely has a devastating impact on children, and places an enormous burden on working parents. Data show very little risk to young kids, even if it isn’t zero. Nobody signed up for closing schools until there’s a vaccine. https://t.co/iE727Fd5TS
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) May 12, 2020
There is mounting evidence suggesting that children are much less likely to spread the virus onto others. This would be very good news if true, and it would undercut existing arguments against reopening schools.
As far as people crying about Paul “attacking” Fauci, this just isn’t true. The senator did what a lot of these Twitter celebrities don’t know how to do: He respectfully raised points of debate and questioned others’ views without showing bad faith.
Agree with Paul or not, the argument he’s putting forward is an eminently reasonable one. That the senator’s discussion should trigger such vitriolic backlash shows not the weakness of his position but rather the increasing extent to which the liberal commentariat is out of touch with reality.
