In a heated exchange during a Senate hearing this Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci fired back at GOP Sen. Rand Paul's accusations that he used his alleged media connections to smear scientists who disagreed with his approach to tackling the covid pandemic.
During the exchange, Fauci held up a screenshot of a "Fire Fauci" fundraising link Paul uses to solicit donations -- a link Fauci said shows that Paul is using the pandemic for political purposes.
Fauci: Why would a Senator want to do this? Go to Rand Paul\u2019s website and you see fire Dr. Fauci with a little box that says contribute here. So you are making catastrophic epidemic for your political gainpic.twitter.com/8dvxZ5ELxp— Acyn (@Acyn) 1641917902
Video of the exchange went viral on Twitter, prompting Paul to take a screenshot of Fauci holding up the "Fire Fauci" link and sarcastically tweet that he and Fauci "finally agreed on something in our Senate hearing today."
But in the comments of Paul's tweet, someone shared a video from last year, showing that Paul was under the mistaken impression that COVID-19 vaccines could stop the virus in its tracks. The clip shows the GOP senator accusing Fauci of formulating "policy based on conjecture." But as the clip shows, Paul was using a little bit of conjecture of his own.
"You've been vaccinated and you parade around in two masks for show," Paul tells Fauci in the year-old clip. "You can't get [COVID] again -- there's virtually zero-percent chance you're gonna get it and you're telling people who have the vaccine, who have immunity -- you're defying everything we know about immunity by telling people to wear a mask who've been vaccinated."
Here's Rand Paul last year lecturing Fauci that breakthrough infections from variants are impossible.pic.twitter.com/wwsU1MrYnw— Bert Gilfoyle (@Bert Gilfoyle) 1641919644
Current data on vaccines overwhelmingly shows that vaccines do not completely eliminate the risk of contracting COVID-19, but they do prevent people from serious illness and death.
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