Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC earlier that day that “let’s try to get the kids back [to school],” changing his long-time stance that schools should be closed.
“If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all, not like one would have suspected,” Fauci explained to Martha Raddatz during the interview.
Fauci’s comments drew widespread criticism.
“I think this illustrates the danger of centralizing power and decision making in one person or in Washington, because when one person is so wrong, as Dr. Fauci has been, it has grave effects for millions of schoolchildren,” Paul told Fox News on Tuesday morning.
“The evidence has been clear for six months, evidence from entire countries in Europe and in Asia, that schools do not lead to a surge, that kids are poor transmitters of this. Country-wide studies were showing this six months ago, and he wouldn’t listen.”
Paul once notably disputed with Fauci on school reopening in May in a Senate hearing.
“We don’t know everything about this virus,” Fauci said at the time. “And we’d really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children.”
“I think we’d better be careful that we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects,” he said.
Tucker Carlson, Fox News correspondent, also criticized Fauci for changing his stance on Monday evening.
“Sixty million American children have been languishing in their rooms since spring, sitting in front of screens, learning nothing, isolated from human contact, in many cases driven to mental illness–and there was no reason for any of that.”
“The experts were wrong,” Carlson continued, “They had no idea what they were doing. But the most amazing part is that they knew they were wrong when they did it, but they kept lying about it, even as American children began to kill themselves.”
Carlson also criticized the media for having been ignoring the facts and echoing with Fauci for keeping schools closed.
Carlson suggested that the reason behind it is President Donald Trump. Because Trump agreed with doctors and called for schools to reopen, therefore the media ignored it.
Paul, who himself is also a physician, also expressed his doubt on the lockdown mandates in his interview with Fox News Tuesday morning.
“We should also look at the evidence on that, do lockdowns prevent the spread of this? Right now we have more mandates and more lockdowns than we’ve ever had. And yet the incidence of COVID is rising exponentially.”
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