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Fauci to Rand Paul: 'I've never made myself out' as the only voice on the pandemic
TheHill ^ | 05/12/20 12:21 PM EDT | BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL

Posted on 05/12/2020 11:35:33 AM PDT by RandFan

Anthony Fauci bluntly told Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday that he has never put himself up as the definitive authority on the coronavirus pandemic.

"I have never made myself out to be the end all and only voice in this. I'm a scientist, a physician and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence," Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a Senate hearing about the coronavirus pandemic.

Fauci pushed back on Paul's comments that scientists should "have a little bit of humility" because they do not know what's best for the economy.

"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 said. "We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other side saying there's not going to be a surge, that we can safely reopen the economy, and the facts will bear this out."

Fauci responded that he doesn't give economic advice.

"I don't give advice about anything other than public health," Fauci said.

Paul, an ophthalmologist, predicted that there won't be a surge in positive cases and deaths in states that are currently reopening their economies.

Paul said he thinks public health officials who model diseases should own up to being wrong if there's no surge, "because I think that's what's going to happen. In rural states we never really reached any sort of pandemic levels in Kentucky and other states."

Paul also suggested that children should go back to school in the fall because he thinks they are at low risk for catching COVID-19 and have such low levels of mortality.

Fauci responded, noting that humility is saying there's a lot people don't know about the virus, especially about its effects on children.

"We really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children, because the more and more we learn, we're seeing things the virus can do that we didn't see from the studies in China or in Europe," Fauci said.

"You're right, in the numbers that children, in general, do much much better than adults and the elderly, and particularly those with underlying conditions, but I am very careful and hopefully humble that I don't know everything about this disease, and that's why I'm very reserved in making broad predictions," Fauci said


TOPICS: Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; US: Kentucky
KEYWORDS: anthonyfauci; coronavirus; disingenuous; fauci; ky; rand; randpaul
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To: conservative98

Two facists, effing America.


21 posted on 05/12/2020 11:52:43 AM PDT by gathersnomoss (Welcf theome to North Mexico, Gringo's it...)
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To: RandFan

He’s the media’s anointed one.

Hillary Clinton was also the media’s anointed one.

See what terrible consequences are in store for us if we disobey their editorial endorsements again!


22 posted on 05/12/2020 11:53:58 AM PDT by MikeHu
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To: conservative98

...The Democrat Party-press and the Democrats of which are you are part of did. They said only Fauci should be talking.”...

The Biblical book of Wisdom, Proverbs, in verses 11:14 and 24:6, mentions the value of having a “multitude of counselors” or of having “many advisers,” when facing perplexing issues, for wisdom is found in seeking a wide range of advice instead of relying solely on the views or knowledge of one or two people. Considering several points of view is the safe and wise thing to do, especially in serious situations. Disastrous results can come from seeking only one kind of counsel. If you were facing a serious life threatening surgery, would you get a second or even third opinion. I guarantee that your physician would if he/she found themselves in that situation. Why should we, as a country, follow a different plan?


23 posted on 05/12/2020 11:56:50 AM PDT by jazzlite (,)
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To: ConservativeDude

‘is this little twerp fauci going to be the one that brings down Trump?’

if, and that is a very big if, Trump goes down, he can look in the mirror, as all presidents who fail to win a second term have to do...based on scanty and biased information, he extended a national lockdown to April 30, an action which gave cover and impetus to dem governors to flex their muscles more freely and engage in extensions of their own, with the tacit knowledge that crashing their own economies could easily be laid at Trump’s feet...we should all read up on Herbert Hoover, and what happened to his once promising presidency...


24 posted on 05/12/2020 11:59:29 AM PDT by IrishBrigade
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To: conservative98

Noted - the voice of Dr. Anthony Fauci was the ONLY one we heard reported for at least two months. Everything he said was dutifully reported, while everybody else was squelched and largely ignored, they were “outliers” and had no authority.

Much of what Dr. Fauci was saying could be described as “thinking out loud”, and anyone listening with a critical ear could hear his evolving thinking, which was never much the same over time compared to what he may have said earlier. But the obvious contradictions and inconsistencies were never called into question.

The press is very bad at not reconciling past history with present declarations. Unless it is to paint those they do not like with a “gotcha”. Then they proceed to distort the past history to make their point.


25 posted on 05/12/2020 11:59:51 AM PDT by alloysteel (Freedom is not a matter of life and death. It is much more serious than that..)
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To: RandFan
I give advice according to the best scientific evidence

What about all those models that were so wrong? That's what Rand actually started out with even though The Hill failed to mention that. "Wrong model after wrong model".

Those models are not scientific evidence and one of them said 2 million will die if we don't do what Fauci says.

The msm has made Fauci into the end all, be all of what to do but that seems to be lost on Fauci.

26 posted on 05/12/2020 12:01:10 PM PDT by Pollard (whatever)
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To: RandFan

Fauci has been at his job for 30 years so why hasn’t he for seen a global pandemic and prepared the country?


27 posted on 05/12/2020 12:01:23 PM PDT by cradle of freedom (Why are they called globalists? Because they want the whole world!)
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To: Buckeye McFrog
OK, Mr. President. There is your opening. Dr. Fauci just said he is not the foremost COVID authority AND DOES NOT WISH TO BE.

Flubros have been wrong. Y'all have scapegoated Fauci because you didn't like the direction (Shutdown) the country chose to go in.

Granted his I love Hillary letter made him the perfect villian.

Fauci was never driving the decisions. He was always one of many Advisors. Trump makes decisions. Governors make decisions.

Fauci may, I'm not sure, have decided to fund a Wuhan virus clinic. He may, again not sure, have an outsized say in treatment protocols.

He can and apparently did recommend a shutdown, but he couldn't decide that.

Which means that your incessant attacks on the shutdown as being a mistake is an attack on Trump, not Fauci.

Trump can withstand the criticism. I'm with Trump. I believe Trump saved over a million lives with the shutdown. I'm also with him that the shut down can't last forever, so I support the phased reopening, with careful monitoring.

28 posted on 05/12/2020 12:02:00 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: IrishBrigade

you know, at the very beginning of his presidency, I had a bit of a fear that Trump resembled Hoover....both in his virtues and in his weaknesses....yeesh. Scary.


29 posted on 05/12/2020 12:02:08 PM PDT by ConservativeDude
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To: RandFan

Fauci is all kinds of bad things but he is powerless to make policy.

The fault for bad policies lies with those who instituted them.


30 posted on 05/12/2020 12:02:39 PM PDT by SaxxonWoods (Just sit in your house until the food stops coming and then starve. You'll be safe.)
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To: cradle of freedom

because he owns part of it, and stands to gain from not preparing the country for it.

JMHO


31 posted on 05/12/2020 12:02:44 PM PDT by QualityMan
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To: conservative98

I hope President Trump is getting lots of information from lots of medical experts around the country and I hope he is keeping it to himself until the right time.


32 posted on 05/12/2020 12:04:17 PM PDT by cradle of freedom (Why are they called globalists? Because they want the whole world!)
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To: Vendome

I see what you did there...


33 posted on 05/12/2020 12:04:27 PM PDT by tatown
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Bravo.


34 posted on 05/12/2020 12:05:03 PM PDT by cradle of freedom (Why are they called globalists? Because they want the whole world!)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Name the two Drs. from CA to the task force and let them speak. Youtube has shut them down. They are two of the very few that make sense .


35 posted on 05/12/2020 12:06:01 PM PDT by Irish Eyes
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To: DannyTN

Amen..... reason prevails over rush driven irrationality and ignorance.

Trump is the leader who will prevail.


36 posted on 05/12/2020 12:06:37 PM PDT by bert ( (KE. NP. N.C. +12) Progressives are existential American enemies)
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To: Pox

The media and the left tries to drive a wedge on anything involving Trump.

Fauci has been wrong about many things regarding this pandemic and he has certainly made some misstatements or said things that were rapidly interpreted by the media and democrats as anti-Trump.

However, he has clarified them later. I am not aware of him trying to stick it directly to Trump and in fact, he has said repeatedly, the President has done everything we asked.

I am not really a fan because I think his (and many others) science was bad and overly broad given the real breakdown of this virus, but I think he is stuck in the middle of two massive forces of public opinion.

The left will hate him if he does not disparage Trump. They have built him up over the past few months and they throw him all kinds of “gotcha” questions to bad mouth the President. While he has made some missteps in messaging and answer, can anyone show me where he has attacked the President?

The right hates him because they blame him for shutting down the economy (Trump’s decision by the way) based on bad models and a one-size fits all approach. While I tend to be firmly in this camp, I don’t hate the man. This virus has been a bizarre experience in many regards and it has revealed a lot of shortcomings in our preparation, plans, and even in the science of viral pandemics, but that is not the fault of one man either. There is no real modern precedent to a pandemic like this. None. Huge events in history generally follow this pattern in that they shatter the world we knew and expose weaknesses.

This was a deliberate attack on the world by China. The science of dealing with it has been “wrong by committee” from the outset and it led to some draconian and unprecedented measures throughout the world. We won’t know for months who was right and who was wrong and we will never really know with full accuracy how many deaths decision A would have given us vs decision B.

Some will guess one extreme and some the other when it is probable the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It’s an apolitical virus. Our interpretation of it and understanding is where the politics are found. Fauci, fair or unfair, right or wrong, is now stuck in the middle of the politics of all of this.


37 posted on 05/12/2020 12:06:42 PM PDT by volunbeer (Find the truth and accept it - anything else is delusional)
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To: RandFan

This is a new disease. There’s still a lot to be learned.

Fauci mentioned Kawasaki Disease in kids from COVID-19. That’s something we’re just now learning about. https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/86393

Do we know what sort of long-term damage people who survive COVID-19 will have? I doubt it. Is it going to reduce people’s lifespan by years? Is it going to cause persistent health problems that people have to contend with for the rest of their lives? I don’t know. Does anyone?

Health experts screwed up by making assumptions about how it spreads. Asymptomatic spread turned out to be much more prevalent than they originally thought. People shouldn’t assume that when someone is over it that they’re truly over it. It’s just too new of a disease to know for sure. That’s why caution makes sense, IMO.


38 posted on 05/12/2020 12:07:51 PM PDT by FreedomForce
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To: volunbeer

Mostly, the right seems to have chosen him as scape goat because they can’t comprehend his position.


39 posted on 05/12/2020 12:07:57 PM PDT by bert ( (KE. NP. N.C. +12) Progressives are existential American enemies)
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To: RandFan

I’m not seeing any headlines on Yahoo’s main page regarding this Senate session. Must be that the DEMs aren’t getting the traction against Trump they hoped for from the hearing, although they and the media will try like hell to produce some.


40 posted on 05/12/2020 12:10:12 PM PDT by CatOwner
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