Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a medical doctor by trade who has had COVID-19, is encouraging Americans to get vaccinated and then kick their masks to the curb.
Paul, who is vaccinated against COVID-19, took to Twitter this week to tell people to “look to the science of immunology” rather than “government scolds,” writing, “Once you’re [two] weeks out from the vaccine, or have recovered from the actual infection, trash your mask and live free again.”
The senator’s tweet was in response to a breaking news notification from CNN, which announced the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is “giving limited freedoms to people” who have received both doses of one of the COVID-19 vaccinations.
During a January appearance on Fox News, Paul said, “If you’ve had the disease or you’ve been vaccinated and you’re several weeks out of your second dose, throw your mask away and tell Dr. Fauci to take a leap because, once you have immunity, you don’t need to do this.”
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as well as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has insisted that life will not change even after Americans have been inoculated against the virus.
In late February, he said even those who have had the vaccine should not resume any semblance of “normal” life. According to him, vaccinated people should not go to restaurants, they should not darken the doors of movie theaters, they should avoid all travel, and they should not go to places where people “congregate.”
Fauci has also encouraged Americans to wear two masks — which Biden, who is fully vaccinated, does — because it “just makes common sense.”
On Wednesday, Fauci admitted the CDC’s guidelines telling vaccinated Americans they should not travel is not rooted in science. Instead, he said that, in lieu of any data or even evidence, decisions are made based on “judgment calls.”
In an op-ed published Wednesday, Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, said he takes issue with the CDC’s “absurdly restrictive” guidelines for vaccinated Americans.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost a lot of credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic by being late or wrong on testing, masks, vaccine allocation and school reopening,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Staying consistent with that pattern, this week — three months after the vaccine rollout began — the CDC finally started telling vaccinated people that they can have normal interactions with other vaccinated people — but only in highly limited circumstances. Given the impressive effectiveness of the vaccine, that should have been immediately obvious by applying scientific inference and common sense.”
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“Parts of the new guidelines are absurdly restrictive,” the doctor added. “For example, the CDC didn’t withdraw its advice to avoid air travel after vaccination. A year of prevaccine experience has demonstrated that airplanes aren’t a source of spread. A study conducted for the Defense Department found that commercial planes have HEPA filtration and airflow that exceed the standards of a hospital operating room.”
Rather than being “paralyzed by fear,” Makary argued, the CDC should be encouraging Americans to take the vaccine and begin resuming normal life.