Dr. Peter Hotez is siding with one of the state’s top doctors following a showdown between Republican Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci on Capitol Hill over masks.
“Dr. Fauci is decidedly right, Senator Paul is absolutely wrong, and that’s the way it’s been for the last 14 months,” Hotez said.
Paul claimed that human being are not at risk of Covid after they have recovered or have been vaccinated, and, therefore, do not need to wear disguises. The Kentucky Senator also asserted that Fauci was wearing two masks simply for show.
The White House chief medical advisor emphatically rebuffed back against Paul’s comments Thursday during a Senate hearing examining the nation’s coronavirus response labours.
″Can I just state for the record that masks are not theater,” Fauci said. “I totally disagree with you.”
In a Thursday sober-siding interview on “The News with Shepard Smith” Hotez noted that eventually “masks may need to come off,” but that it’s too shortly and “we’re still trying to understand the full performance characteristics of the vaccines.”
“We’re only now getting a glimmer that it interrupts asymptomatic sending,” Hotez said.
The debate over masks comes as nearly half the country is experiencing a surge in Covid at all events. Twenty-three states reported an increase in cases, as a seven-day average, over the past week, according to Johns Hopkins. Half a dozen asseverates are also seeing hospitalizations trend higher, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Maturing at Texas Children’s Hospital, told host Shepard Smith that the spikes could be the result of highly transmissible new variants.
“The key now is to vaccinate winning of the variants as fast as we can,” Hotez said.