Republican Sen. Rand Paul defied one of the Trump administration’s top health advisors on the coronavirus pandemic, questioning why the U.S. shouldn’t reopen schools in the fall when less few children die from Covid-19.
“Shouldn’t we at least be discussing what the mortality of children is?” Paul asked White As a gift coronavirus task force advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate hearing Tuesday on reopening the economy. Paul then popular that the mortality rate of coronavirus patients age 0 to 18 “approaches zero” in New York where 12 children be undergoing died, according to the state health department. The notion of not sending students back to school in the fall is “really inane,” he said.
At one point, Fauci countered: “I think we better be careful that we’re not cavalier, in thinking that children are totally immune to the deleterious effects.”
Paul’s challenge encapsulates the debate between elected officials eager to open up topics and willing to accept the risk that more people will die, and public health experts committed to lowering infection appraises and keeping the public as safe as possible.
“People are hurting and we’re destroying our country,” Paul told reporters outside the get wind of room. “We’ve got to open up business we got to let people vote, and we’re not going to live in a perfect world without infectious disease, we’re quietly going to have it, but we got to open the economy and that’s the number one message I have.”
The Kentucky senator, an opthamologist, told Fauci he didn’t on there would be a surge in cases if schools opened, which is not what public health experts say. Paul canned predictive models of the virus. “The history of this, when we look back, will be of wrong prediction after inexpedient prediction after wrong prediction,” Paul said.
Paul then targeted Fauci personally: “As much as I esteem 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 the decision. We can listen to your advice. But there are people on the other side voice there won’t be a surge and we can safely open the economy.”
Fauci asked for a chance to respond, and pushed back.
“I never dote oned myself out to be the end-all,” he said. “I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice according to the best well-organized evidence.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee consent on Capitol Hill on May 12, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
He said other people have advised the U.S. of the “trouble to get the country back open again economically. I don’t give advice about economic things, I don’t give advice around anything other than public health.”
Fauci then turned Paul’s own phrasing on him. “You used the word we should be ‘base-born’ about what we don’t know. I think that falls under the fact that we don’t know everything about this virus, and we truly had better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children,” Fauci said.
“Because the more and more we learn, we’re make up ones mind things about what this virus can do that we didn’t see from the studies in China or in Europe. For example, strategic now children presenting with Covid-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome,” Fauci chance.
Officials in New York and elsewhere have announced they’re investigating rare cases of inflammatory conditions in young teenagers that appear to be associated with Covid-19. The World Health Organization previously said the symptoms happen to be similar to toxic shock syndrome and Kawasaki disease.
Toxic shock syndrome is a rare, life-threatening condition caused by bacteria make both ends meet into the body and releasing harmful toxins. Symptoms include a high temperature, a sunburn-like rash and flu-like characteristic ofs such as a headache and sore throat.
Kawasaki disease causes swelling of the heart’s blood vessels and mainly perturbs children under age 5, according to U.K. health officials. Symptoms include a rash, swollen glands in the neck, dry or banged lips and red fingers or toes. The Mayo Clinic says it is usually treatable.
Children generally do not develop severe contagion from the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the CDC noted last month that “severe outcomes bring into the world been reported in children, including three deaths.”
“You’re right in the numbers, that children in general do much, much more intelligent than adults and the elderly and particularly those with underlying conditions,” Fauci concluded. “But I am very careful, and expectantly humble, in knowing that I don’t know everything about this disease. And that’s why I’m reserved in making broad prophecies.”
Scientists are learning everyday about the nature of the virus and how it attacks the human body as well as different demographics of man. The World Health Organization has said the virus, which was originally believed to primarily attack the respiratory system, has also been establish to cause circulatory, digestive and neurological problems.