The ongoing feud between Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Sen. Rand Paul picked up on Wednesday during a Senate hearing on the Biden administration’s response to the monkeypox virus.
Paul, a physician as well as a politician, played a clip of Fauci explaining to a C-SPAN reporter in 2004 that “the most potent vaccination is getting infected yourself.”
In the clip from an episode of C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” a woman called in saying she’d had the flu for 14 days and had suffered negative reactions to getting the flu shot in previous years.
“But she’s had the flu for 14 days. Should she get a flu shot?” the C-SPAN host asked. (The full video is here. The woman’s question starts at about the 28-minute mark.)
“Well, no. If she got the flu for 14 days, she’s as protected as anybody can be, because the best vaccination is to get infected yourself,” Fauci replied.
He doubled down, “If she really has the flu, she definitely doesn’t need a flu vaccine.”
The clip ended and the Kentucky senator pounced.
“Currently, antibody surveys show that approximately 80 percent of children have had COVID,” Paul said. “Yet there are no guidelines coming from you or anybody in the government to take into account their naturally acquired immunity.”
He wanted to know why Fauci “seemed to really embrace basic immunology in 2004 and how you or why you seem to reject it now?”
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Fauci, of course, denied he was rejecting immunology and said that “vaccination following infection gives an added extra boost.”
He also insisted that the clip Paul just played was taken out of context, because it involved a question about a woman who’d had previous bad reactions to a flu shot. He picked up a fact check published by Reuters in April and began to read it: “Fauci’s 2004 comments do not contradict his pandemic stance.”
Paul abruptly cut him off, “Actually, words don’t lie.”
He repeated the words Fauci had just uttered in the clip. He’d admitted that natural immunity is more potent than vaccinations.
“When you’re trying to tell us that kids need a third or a fourth vaccine, are you including the variability or the variable of previous infection in the studies? No, you’re not,” Paul said.
“What you’re doing is denying the very fundamental premise of immunology that previous infection does provide some sort of immunity. It’s not in any of your studies. Almost none of your studies from the CDC or from the government have the variable of whether or not you’ve been previously infected. … People decry vaccine hesitancy — it’s coming from the gobbledygook that you give us. You’re not paying attention to the science,” he added.
“I have never, ever denied fundamental immunology. In fact, I wrote the chapter in the textbook of medicine on fundamental immunology,” Fauci shot back.
In today’s hearing, I showed a video of Dr. Fauci claiming natural immunity is “The most potent vaccination.”
Fauci tried to use the corporate media to defend himself, but words don’t lie. pic.twitter.com/8iP4wShqnJ
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) September 14, 2022
Paul then questioned Fauci on whether he or anyone else who votes on authorizing vaccines receives royalties from the drug manufacturers.
“We’ve been asking you, and you refuse to answer, whether anyone on the vaccine committees gets royalties from the pharmaceutical companies,” Paul said. “I asked you last time, and what was your response? ‘We don’t have to tell you.’”
“But I tell you this: When we get in charge, we’re going to change the rules, and you will have to divulge where you get your royalties from … and if anyone on the committee has a conflict of interest we’re going to learn about. I promise you that,” he said.
The full exchange can be viewed in the video below.
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Last month, Fauci announced he will be retiring from his roles as medical adviser to the president and as NIAID director at the end of the year.
If Republicans win back control of the House in the midterms, we can expect investigations into Fauci’s handling of the pandemic to begin.
