Sen. Paul on Ending Mandates, Omicron and Fauci’s Future

CLAY: Senator Rand Paul with us. Senator Paul, appreciate you joining us. I just saw you tweet about the Capitol Club and your decision there.

Quitting Capitol Hill Club: I will not be a member of any club that acquiesces to a requirement to reveal your medical records.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 21, 2022

Senator, with the conjunction of the CDC finally admitting that natural immunity was more protective by October of 2021 than was the covid vaccine — and with the Pfizer CEO saying that the first two doses of the Pfizer vaccine do not actually provide limited, if any, protection against Omicron — how in the world is there any logical foundation for vaccine mandates any longer?

SEN. PAUL: There’s zero. But we have to stand up for ourselves. For goodness’ sakes, the Capitol Club, I think, is owned by the Republican Party. They would probably lose less money by hiring an attorney to fight the mayor and the city than they will by all of us leaving the Capitol Club. So, you know, I’m also fighting the mandates for all of D.C. You know, D.C. is under the rule of Congress.

And I’ve introduced legislation to get rid of the mandates and say, “Look, we’re gonna have a free city,” but they’re destroying the city. I mean, all the restaurants around the Capitol are being destroyed. There are no tourists in D.C. The Capitol is still closed, ’cause Nancy Pelosi is protecting us against the next insurrection. I mean, they’re destroying our nation’s capital, and someone’s gotta somehow speak some sense to these people.

BUCK: Senator Rand Paul, it’s Buck. We always appreciate you being with us. I wanted to bring something to your attention. I’m sure you’re familiar with some of the work done by Alex Berenson. He wrote Pandemia, and he’s just been following the data very closely. He recently put out on his Substack some data from the General Hospital of San Francisco or San Francisco General Hospital, and it showed that over 70% — and this just in one hospital, but as a microcosm I think it’s interesting.

Over 70% of those in the hospital in San Francisco that he spoke of were actually vaccinated for covid. And we’re wondering if you see any of this, because early on during this wave, we were being told that in some states — in Massachusetts, at one point it was, you know, 30% of people in the hospital were vaccinated. We keep hearing that it’s only the unvaccinated that are at risk. But there doesn’t seem to be good data, and some of the data seems to go against that. I just wanted you to weigh in on this.

SEN. PAUL: Well, the thing they’re not being honest about is that virtually everybody who’s at risk has been vaccinated. The CDC’s own statistics say that those over 65, it’s somewhere between 95 to 97% of the public’s been vaccinated so I tell you, kind of hard not to have a majority of the people in the hospital be vaccinated. The thing is that really the vaccine, voluntary vaccination has been overwhelmingly successful, but it’s never enough for these people.

That’s why if you give in to a mandate, if you give in to the mandate for 10-year-olds, they’ll want to do 5-year-olds. If you give in to 5-year-olds, they’ll want to do newborns. But what they’re really ignoring and the thing that people should be alarmed with is, they are ignoring the comparison of risk factor of the disease versus the risk of the vaccine, particularly for children and particularly for adolescent males. And I think this is really a crime.

You have — and really people should go to the court system. Princeton, Yale, University of Chicago are actually advocating a mandate for something that is very unhealthy and risky for your adolescent male. For your 18, 20-year-old male, the risk of a problem from the vaccine greatly exceeds any risk they have from the disease, and it’s really a crime against these children that prominent universities in our country are mandating something that is complete malpractice, as far as I’m concerned.

CLAY: We’re talking to Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator, I’m sure you saw Boris Johnson in England has ended the national mask mandate and the vaccine mandates in order to be able to enter businesses from a federal perspective over there. How long do you think it might be ’til Joe Biden and the Democrats are willing to do such a thing? And if they’re not willing to do such a thing, what can you guys in Congress do to help combat this?

SEN. PAUL: I think public opinion on hypocrisy goes a long way. You know, so many of these people that have been willing to invoke these mandates on us are unwilling to obey their own mandates, and I think that’s hurt their cause. But we have to push back. We have to all of us push back. We have to, you know, quit frequenting them. Do not go to a restaurant and call up your favorite restaurant if they want papers and say, “I’m not revealing my medical records to go to your restaurant.”

That’s what we all need to do. Ultimately economic pressure works, and it will end. But there’s also become a dichotomy. We end up having a free part of our country in totalitarian zones up north. I mean, Florida’s a free zone, so people are moving to Florida by droves. People are vacationing. Even AOC can’t have a good time in New York so she’s gotta go to Florida. But this is what… People have to vote with their feet and with their dollars, and they have to flee these places.

Some of it’s happening. I mean, it’s one of the reasons Congress is gonna flip is that population movement over the last several years is they’re fleeing New York and California for freedom. And now they’re doing it for vacation because you can’t live your life. But it’s utter stupidity that we allow these people who aren’t using science, it’s just their authoritarian impulse causes them to want new mandates.

But really the science is against all this. Everybody is getting the Omicron. Everybody’s probably gonna get it. Masks are completely useless. Theory now admitting it. But you know what I fear? They’re gonna mandate the N95. Instead of admitting that the mandates on masks haven’t done a thing to the disease, they’re gonna mandate an even harsher mask (chuckles) is what’s probably gonna come from these morons.

BUCK: Senator Paul, just so you know, I have Omicron right now and Clay had it last week. So to your point that everyone’s gonna get it, it’s all over the place, and these mandates obviously haven’t done a damn thing to slow this down. It’s ridiculous. Do you think that we’re gonna get to a place where, after tens of millions at a millions of Americans — at a minimum — have had Omicron within 60 days we’re gonna start being told, you need to get an Omicron shot now because I think Pfizer is coming out with their Omicron-specific vaccine in March. I’ve been telling Clay I’m worried that these people are so maniacal, they’re gonna say, “Oh, you just had Omicron? Come get your Omicron shot, or else.”

SEN. PAUL: Yeah. The good news about Omicron for most people — and I’m not saying for everybody, but for most people who get through it — is you basically had a live, attenuated vaccine. It is nature’s vaccine and it’s a much less deadly virus than the previous iteration. Now, there’s still people dying. So, I mean, we still need to try to protect those who are dying, but it’s primarily people are multiple diseases, people over a certain age-group, and absolutely people overweight.

And people need to monitor their symptoms. Even with Omicron, if you are getting worse in the first five days, that is your window of time when you need to seek treatment. And this is something you’ll never hear from Fauci or anybody in the government. They say vaccination’s it, and then you’re fine. They don’t tell you that you can still get sick if you’re vaccinated but that there is a treatment. There are multiple treatments, but you need to get them in the first five, maybe the first 10 days.

But nobody is telling you that. The monoclonal antibodies that do work well, if you wait ’til day eight, nine, 10, 11, they don’t work as well. And often the hospital won’t even give ’em to you at that point. So this is the thing we need to know. We need to protect the vulnerable. This is what the Great Barrington Declaration was about. It’s what the smart epidemiologists that are practicing and preaching some truth are telling us. Protect those who are vulnerable but tell them there are treatments and not just to sit at home doing nothing.

CLAY: Senator Paul, when is Dr. Fauci gonna be gone from his position? How do we get rid of him?

SEN. PAUL: The day after the election in November 2022, my suspicion is he will retire. Either way, even if he does retire, we are going to subpoena every one of his records. We are gonna get to the bottom of where the virus came from, and I plan on having hearings on not only domestic rules on creating these viruses that don’t exist in nature that could be potentially deadly. I’m gonna ask…

Once we can get our domestic house in order — and we’re no longer doing it — we shouldn’t fund China. But I really think there needs to be an international convention of civilized nations to come together, kind of like we’ve done with chemical weapons and also how we’ve done with nuclear proliferation. They’re not perfect, but I think we could get hundreds of nation nations to come together and say:

“Look, we just had five, 10 million people die from something that probably came from a lab. Can we now all sort of agree voluntarily not to do this type of research?” This is what really has to happen. And this has been my main beef with Fauci. It’s not about, you know, I’m right and he’s wrong — which is largely true, but it’s not all about that. (chuckles) It’s about trying to prevent this from happening again.

CLAY: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. We appreciate it.

SEN. PAUL: Thank you.

BUCK: Thank you so much. We appreciate you being with us.