The Kentucky Republican senator was addressing Dr. Anthony Fauci --- the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases -- at a senate hearing Tuesday, on wuhannavirus response.
Fauci, along with other members of the White House Wuhanavirus Task Force including Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health with the US Department of Health and Services, and FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn, all testified before the Senate committee for over 3 hours.
Senator Paul knocked Fauci's penchant for making sweeping and grim comments about the wuhanvirus pandemic. "I think government experts need to show caution in their prognostications,” the senator cautioned. He also accused Fauci of being a know-it-all.
Here is a partial transcript of the senator's comments:
“It is a fatal conceit to believe any one person or small group of people has the knowledge necessary to direct an economy or dictate public health behavior. I think government experts need to show caution in their prognostications.
It’s important to realize that if society meekly submits to an expert and that expert is wrong, a great deal of harm may occur when we allow one man’s policy or one group of small men and women to be foisted on an entire nation.
Take for example government experts who continue to call for schools and day care to stay closed or that recommend restrictions that make it impossible for a school to function. There are examples from all across the United States and around the world that show that young children rarely spread the virus,” he asserted, pointing to countries that have reopened, including Denmark, France and Germany.
No spike when schools are opened. Central planners have enough knowledge somehow to tell a nation of some 330 million people what they can and can’t do.
We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what’s best for everyone. Only decentralized power and decision-making based on millions of individualized situations can arrive at what risk and behaviors each individual will choose. That’s what America was founded on, not a herd with Washington telling us what to do and like sheep we blindly follow.
Dr. Fauci, every day we seem to hear from you things we can’t do. But when you’re asked, ‘Can we go back to school?’? I don’t hear much certitude at all. ‘Well, maybe.’ ‘It depends.’ Guess what? It’s rare for kids to transmit this. I don’t hear that coming from you. All I hear is, ‘We can’t do this, we can’t do that, we can’t play baseball."
Responding, Fauci said he agreed with much of what Senator Paul said and blamed the media for misinterpreting his comments.
WATCH the exchange.