Sen. Rand Paul: The Science Is on Our Side

BUCK: The senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, is with us now. Senator Paul, thank you for making the time.

SEN. PAUL: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me.

BUCK: So, you’ve said that it’s time for people to just stop doing the things that we’ve been told — forced — to do, so-called mitigation measures, the Fauci-ite mitigation strategies. What do you want folks out there to take it upon themselves to do at this point, Senator?

SEN. PAUL: There’s no science behind mask mandates or standing apart from people actually slowing the spread. There is science that the vaccine and also natural immunity have slowed the spread of this. But, really, putting masks on our kids is not and not based in science, and it’s a disservice to our kids.

So, our kids should be able to go to school unmolested by their government and we should try to do the best we can during this, but let’s give facts out there. Let’s don’t spread the misinformation that everyone’s dying from the Delta variant. The truth is that it’s more contagious but less deadly.

CLAY: That’s an important distinction that certainly many people who watch television news do not get. So, can you walk us through that? Thanks for coming on with us, Senator Paul. When you say that the Delta variant is more contagious but less deadly, does that also mean for children? Explain. Kind of unpack that statement for us, if you would.

SEN. PAUL: One of the largest studies of the Delta variant comes from England. So, Public Health England had a study of 92,000 patients. The people who’d been vaccinated under age 50, no one died. Zero. If you were under 50 and you were unvaccinated the deaths were .08%. So less than the typical flu. This is a good sign that the death rate for vaccinated was zero, and for the unvaccinated under 50 was still very small.

Now, if you go above age 50 in the vaccinated group, there still were some deaths. It was pretty small, but there were some deaths — about 1.4%, and then among the unvaccinated, about 3.4%. So really under age 50% vaccinated or unvaccinated there were very, very few deaths. Above age 50, there’s more. This is what I’ve been saying all along. If you are at risk for this, get vaccinated.

If you catch the disease, be aware that, as you get sicker, monoclonal antibodies can save your life. Dr. Fauci will never tell you this. He’ll tell you to put on 14 masks and put ’em over your ears and your nose and everything else, but he won’t tell you the one thing that could save your life, and that’s monoclonal antibodies. If you become congested, if you get a bronchitis, if your doctor thinks you’re getting sicker, the monoclonal antibodies can save your life.

BUCK: Senator Paul, that’s essential, and I want to know why… President Trump, when he got covid, they treated him with monoclonal antibodies at Walter Reed, I believe, it was right away. And he was back in action within 48 hours pretty much, maybe sooner. Why haven’t we been hearing more about them? I have not heard a public health official mention monoclonal antibodies in months; I would bet Clay hasn’t either. Why is that?

SEN. PAUL: It’s a real service because they’re hung up on politics. So, for example, there’s this television station — I don’t suggest watching it — called CNN.

CLAY: (laughing)

SEN. PAUL: And on CNN, the doctors will tell you that a mask is more important than a vaccine. That is outright malpractice. They ought to be sued and taken off the air. The masks largely have not prevented the infection. When we put mask mandates in place, the infection has gone up in incidence. And here’s the thing: You’re actually telling somebody something that could kill them. If you tell them that a cloth mask works and they decide to take care of their…

We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children?

Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom. pic.twitter.com/XrI2tjdAHW

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 8, 2021

Let’s say you’re 80 years old and you’re gonna take care of your wife who now has covid. If you take care of her and you wear a cloth mask, you’re going to get infected. The cloth mask doesn’t work. So you’re actually telling people to wear something that would encourage dangerous behavior. The only mask that works is the N95.

But it only works if it’s tightly snug to your face, and you throw it away after a single use. It can work a little bit other than that, but really the cloth masks don’t work, and so what we’re doing is encouraging people to do risky behavior, thinking the mask protects them, when in reality the mask is probably not of any benefit at all, the cloth mask.

CLAY: Senator Paul, I’m going to my school board meeting as a parent. I’ve got a kid. He’s a first grader now and a fifth grader along with an eighth grader, and they’re debating whether or not masks should be required in our schools. There are gonna be a lot of parents. I think they’re gonna show up and advocate as I am that it doesn’t make sense for kids to be wearing masks.

We had Dr. Makary yesterday from Johns Hopkins. H was fantastic; he was talking about his Wall Street editorial. I think it’s important when you’re getting banned by YouTube and everywhere else. Can you talk to the parents out there? Does it make sense for their kids to be wearing masks in school from a scientific basis?

SEN. PAUL: The death rate from covid among people under age 25 is one in a million. That’s less than the seasonal flu. So if we’re gonna wear masks for covid, we should wear it for the seasonal flu, too, which means your kids would never be free of masks for the rest of their lives, ’cause the seasonal flu is not going away. So it’s not a rational sort of statement.

So, yeah. I think we should push back on them and we should show ’em the science. The biggest study on this was in Denmark, and it involved 6,000 people. Three thousand people wore masks all the time when they left their house, 3,000 didn’t, and the incidence of covid turned out to be the same over a long period of time. The other controlled study was from Vietnam.

Sixteen hundred health care workers were studied, and interestingly, the people who wore cloth masks got more infections than the people who wore no mask. They also looked at virus-size particles going through the cloth mask, and 97% of the particles went through a cloth mask. The cloth mask was just a sieve. It don’t work.

I presented these in a speech and YouTube took ’em down. This is the real danger we have of a world in which the only thing that is considered to be truth is dispensed by the government, and anybody who disagrees with the government is going to be banned. That’s what’s happened to me on YouTube.

I’m banned for seven days. But, to tell you the truth, I’m having really second thoughts about going back on at all. There’s Rumble.com, where I put videos. There’s also LibertyTree.com where I’m posting news. So we have to, as conservatives, maybe quit lending our time, our content, and our posts to people who hate us and despise us.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator Paul, when we look at the actual numbers, it’s pretty stunning the degree of fear that is out there in the media right now that they’re trying to cause in people versus what the numbers would seem to suggest.

They’re talking about pediatric hospitalizations for covid, for example, and nationwide right now there’s about 200 — give or take – in the entire country, kids who they think are in hospital for covid. They could also be in the hospital for RSV infection. I’m sure you know a lot more about than I do, as a doctor.

But there are other reasons they could be even there. The numbers don’t seem to justify the panic at all based on where we’ve been and where we are now. So what is it going to take? When do the Fauci-ites leave us alone, in your mind? What do we have to do?

SEN. PAUL: I think they have a secondary intention. I think their secondary intention is basically to gain power over your lives and to grow government bigger and to have government dictate your behavior. It’s submission to the collective. It isn’t really about the science or the lies. In fact, if you look at it, particularly with the children, they’re more likely to be struck by lightning than die from covid.

That still is true. That is a fact. That was with the first covid. We now have a covid that is less deadly than the first, and all the statistics say Delta is less deadly. Now, it’s pretty darn contagious. So people who’ve been vaccinated may still get it. People who have natural infection, like myself, could still get it. But the most important thing is to he will it people what to do if you begin getting sick.

So people over 65 are at great risk. People overweight are at significant risk. If you’re 40 years old and 40 pounds overweight and you get covid and four days later you’re starting to cough and getting congestion in your chest, you need to get the monoclonal antibodies. Now, you’re gonna have to ask the doctor to evaluate and agree with that.

But the things is the squeaky wheel gets the grease on this, and a lot of patients are not being treated because they aren’t advocating strongly enough for themselves or their family, or they’re older and don’t know the treatment exists. But this is the real disservice of Dr. Fauci. He’s supposed to be for public health.

He should be on television doing public service announcements about monoclonal antibodies. Instead, he’s haranguing us about putting masks on our children inside or masking up parents when you talk to your kids in your house at home, or putting masks on people running track. Completely contrary to any scientific evidence.

CLAY: Last question, Senator Paul. How do we end this? There are a lot of people out there listening to us right now that are saying, “It’s been 18 months. How do we get back to some form of normalcy?” We get that question all the time. “What can I do? What can an individual do?” What would you tell people who want to reclaim normalcy in America and end the covid madness?

SEN. PAUL: You know, I think some of the best speeches I’ve heard have been at school board meetings. So when you go to your school board meeting (chuckles), be ready and be prepared. And the thing is, the public gets it. But you have self-interested people who don’t want to show up for work, unions who say, “We’re not gonna work! Even though we’ve been vaccinated or offered a vaccine, we’re still not going to work.”

But the science is with us. The left has been saying, “Obey the science.” But the science is overwhelming that we are at a point where we may not be able to eradicate this. This thing may come back every couple months, every year. But the thing is, we have ways to treat it. The vaccine lessens the severity of the disease, and so does natural immunity.

There’s a large study out of Israel that said actually natural immunity, having had the infection, prevented reinfection even better than the vaccine. I’m not arguing against the vaccine, but we need to lump into the people and include the idea that natural immunity is part of our community, developing enough immunity to slow this thing down.

BUCK: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Sir, we really appreciate your time and just all your work on this issue. Thanks for being with us.

SEN. PAUL: Thanks, guys.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: You just heard us talking with Senator Rand Paul. Seven days YouTube has banned him for sharing data that goes against the idea that everyone is going to die of covid and that we all have to be curled up in the fetal position. Look, a couple of stats that I jotted down here. Rand Paul told us just a few minutes ago, Buck, one in a million people under the age of 25 have died with covid, less than the seasonal flu.

Again, this is under the age of 25. That’s less than the chances of being struck by lightning. He’s been suspended by YouTube for seven days for saying, “Masks make no scientific sense for children.” Regardless of what your political beliefs are, how terrifying is it that YouTube can make the decision that a medical doctor who is a (chuckling) democratically elected senator is not allowed to share his opinions on covid on their platform?

BUCK: Clay?

CLAY: It’s wild!

BUCK: They banned a sitting president of the United States. (laughing) We didn’t cross the Rubicon; we leapt over it and ran a thousand yards past it. This is insane.

CLAY: These facts are all true, though! This is where it gets… At least you could argue in other sort of — again, in quotation marks — “disinformation,” that… When you’re looking at real raw data, I’m with you; it’s crazy. But this is next-level crazy because he can demonstrably prove that what he’s saying is true. It’s not an opinion.

BUCK: Everyone has to understand this. There will never come a time — there will absolutely never be a moment — when you have the Fauci-ites, the Democrat Party, the apparatus of control admitting that they made any real mistakes in the policies that they have forced down our throats and on our faces, if you will. That’s the reality. It will never happen.

It does not matter what studies come out. It does not matter what the science tells us. They will say that they did the right thing; it was necessary, and Clay — and this is the critical piece — they would do it again, because they like the ability to institute this level of control in society. We used to worry about civil liberties after 9/11, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: There actually were some leftists who were concerned —

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: — because they thought that there was going to be some bigotry against the Muslim-American community or just Muslims more generally around the world and there were all these concerns. And, yeah, okay, the Patriot Act. There were some things in there, look at reading lists of libraries.

There was some stuff people that said, “Hmm, that seems not very civil liberties oriented.” What we have been through with the covid lockdowns over the last 18 months is so much more egregious and damaging to individual liberty, to constitutional protections, to basic freedoms in our society, and what’s so troubling about it is how many people are okay with it!

They’re saying, “Yeah. As long as my two masks and my goggles and my hand sanitizer keep me safe and warm at night, no big deal.” This is terrifying to me, Clay. I actually still believed the Spirit of 1776 and the founders and the Constitution was alive and well with more than 30% of the country when it comes to freedom and constitutional protections. But I don’t know. I’m starting to worry.

CLAY: How much different would our country be right now if Rand Paul had been the head of the NIH? Certainly if he had been president, but just if you didn’t have Fauci, if you had Rand Paul in that exact same office.

BUCK: Oh, I say this to friends of mine all of the time. I think Rand Paul would make a… I don’t think he ever will win the presidency just because he’s not that retail politics, handshake, grinning guy.

CLAY: He doesn’t kiss say babies. He’s kind of the brusque doctor.

BUCK: He’s kind of like, “I don’t know about your baby.”

CLAY: (laughing) Right! He’s a doctor. Yeah.

BUCK: He’s a little laid back. But he’d be a good president, man, ’cause he wouldn’t… He would be like a Calvin Coolidge circa 2020 whatever, right? He would be a guy coming in who’s not trying to harass and push all the stuff on all of us all the time. Wouldn’t that be so refreshing.

CLAY: I just want somebody who looks at the data and gives me honest facts. I’m not asking for you to wow me. I’m not asking for you to blow my mind. But if we just had Rand Paul able to walk into the White House Situation Room and just walk through all the data? To me, that would be a different maker of enormous magnitude. Again, brusque doctor sometimes but, yes, he’d been incredible.