Rand Paul to Dr. Fauci: "I don't think you're the end-all"

"I'm a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence." - Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Transcript

00:00I think we ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what's best for the

00:05economy. And as much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don't think you're the end-all. I don't think

00:10you're the one person that gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice, but there are people

00:14on the other side saying there's not going to be a surge and that we can safely open the economy,

00:18and the facts will bear this out. But if we keep kids out of school for another year, what's going

00:23to happen is the poor and underprivileged kids who don't have a parent that's able to teach them at

00:26home are not going to learn for a full year. And I think we ought to look at the Swedish model and

00:31we ought to look at letting our kids get back to school. I think it's a huge mistake if we don't

00:34open the schools in the fall. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, can I respond to that even though

00:39there are only 32 seconds left? Yes, and you might make it clear whether or not you suggested that

00:47we shouldn't go back to school in the fall. Well, first of all, Senator Paul, thank you for

00:53your comments. I have never made myself out to be the end-all and only voice in this. I'm a scientist,

00:58a physician, and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence.

01:04There are a number of other people who come into that and give advice that are more related to the

01:10things that you spoke about, about the need to get the country back open again and economically. I

01:15don't give advice about economic things. I don't give advice about anything other than public

01:21health. So I wanted to respond to that. The second thing is that you use the word we should

01:26be humble about what we don't know. And I think that falls under the fact that we don't know

01:31everything about this virus. And we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to

01:35children, because the more and more we learn, we're seeing things about what this virus can do

01:41that we didn't see from the studies in China or in Europe. For example, right now, children

01:46presenting with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome,

01:53very similar to Kawasaki syndrome. I think we better be careful if we are not cavalier

01:59in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects. So again, you're right

02:05in the numbers that children in general do much, much better than adults and the elderly,

02:11and particularly those with underlying conditions. But I am very careful and hopefully humble

02:16in knowing that I don't know everything about this disease,

02:19and that's why I'm very reserved in making broad predictions. Thank you.