Sen. Rand Paul on Saturday hit back at YouTube censors who kicked him off the website for claiming that cloth masks do not protect against the coronavirus now that the Centers for Disease Control has updated its guidance on mask-wearing.
The Kentucky senator was suspended from the website for a week in August after he claimed in one video that ‘Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection.’ He added that cloth masks, especially, do not work.
A spokesperson for YouTube told NBC News at the time that the video violated its policy on COVID-19 misinformation, which includes ‘claims that wearing a mask is dangerous or causes negative physical health effects’ or that masks don’t play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19.
But over the weekend, the CDC changed its tune amid the spread of the Omicron variant, and is now admitting that ‘loosely woven cloth products provide the least protection,’ according to the New York Times.
It says in its new guidance that ‘well-fitting disposable surgical masks and KN95s’ provide more protection against the virus, and is now urging Americans to ‘wear the most protective mask that you can that fits well and that you will wear consistently.’
Paul, who himself is a clinician, tweeted a link to the Times story about the new guidance, and wrote: ‘Does this mean snot-nosed censors at YouTube will come to my office and kiss my … and admit I was right?’
DailyMail.com has reached out to YouTube for comment.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Saturday slammed YouTube for censoring him over an August video in which he claimed that cloth masks do not protect against the coronavirus
A spokesperson for the video-sharing website said the post violated its policy on COVID misinformation
Recently, the CDC changed its guidance on mask-wearing and now recommends people wear either a surgical mask or an N95, prompting Paul to ask on Saturday whether the censors at YouTube will apologize to him
The Centers for Disease Control’s new guidance comes as COVID cases are starting to level off from a holiday surge spurred by the highly-contagious Omicron variant.
Over the past few days, the infection rate has slowed in 44 states, and nationally, the daily case average has stagnated to 798,335 on Friday. That is just a 1.5 percent increase from the week before.
And while the U.S. set a one day record of over 1.4 million cases on Tuesday, the figure was inflated as a result of weekend reporting lags, and is not reflective of single day averages. The current 798,000 cases per day is the most America has ever experienced.
The largest drops in case growth in recent days have been experienced in Northeast, with states that were once seeing meteoritic case growth now seeing case rates starting to taper off.
New York, where the Omicron variant was first detected in the United States, is now averaging 293 new Covid cases per every 100,000 residents every day, about the same as it was two weeks ago. While the Empire state is still among the national leaders in infection rate, it could slowly slide down the leaderboards.
In neighboring New Jersey, 264 of every 100,000 residents are testing positive daily, a 2 percent decline over the past two weeks.
Other states that were recording surges in recent weeks like Maryland, Georgia and Illinois have all seen case growth taper off in mid-January, even as cases in California, Utah, South Carolina and Arkansas continue to surge.
But once a peak is reached in the United States, cases could quickly start to decline. In the UK, which trends ahead of the U.S., cases are dropping by nearly 40 percent over the past week, a miraculous decline for a nation that many people felt was going to be totally overwhelmed by the virus only weeks ago. The nation’s capital, London, emerged as an early global hotspot for the variant, and has already seen cases fall off as well.
South Africa, the place of Omicron’s discovery and the first place to feel the effects of the highly infectious variant, has seen a massive drop in daily cases in recent weeks as well, with current daily case figures hovering around 6,500 – down 70 percent from the late December peak on 23,000 cases per day.
The CDC now says cloth masks are the least effective in protecting against COVID
The Centers for Disease Control, meanwhile, has been criticized in recent weeks for its changing guidelines – most notably its update on the amount of time those infected with COVID or one of its variants should quarantine.
The agency is now saying people who are asymptomatic should quarantine for only five days as long as they continue to test negative for COVID, rather than the 10 days the agency originally suggested.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said the CDC’s fluctuating guidance is due to new scientific information, but that hasn’t stopped some of the country’s most prominent leaders from questioning the agency’s authority.
And just last week, Sen. Rand Paul got into a war-of-words with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, with the senator claiming that Fauci has profited off the pandemic.
During a hearing before a Senate panel to defend the Biden administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Paul accused Fauci of being responsible for the COVID deaths of thousands.
He doubled down on his claim that COVID-19 was likely engineered through gain-of-function research in a lab in Wuhan, China and subsequently leaked from that lab. Paul has also blamed Fauci’s department of the National institute of Health for helping fund the lab and it’s gain-of-function research.
Fauci, the nation’s top immunologist and White House go-to on the coronavirus response, has repeatedly denied these claims to Paul’s face in a series of terse back-and-forths during committee hearings over the last nearly two years.
But bombshell email revelations now show that even leading Western experts admitted that a Wuhan lab leak is the most ‘likely’ cause and origin of the COVID-19 virus.
Top UK government health adviser Sir Jeremy Farra, who publicly denounced the theory as a ‘conspiracy’, admitted in private emails to Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins in February 2020 that a ‘likely explanation’ was that the virus was man-made.
Paul has also accused Fauci of using government resources and his $430,000-a-year salary to attack scientists who disagree with him.
But Fauci claimed Paul was making these claims to try and attract donors, holding up a piece of paper with a fundraising page for Paul printed on it
‘I ask myself, why would senator (sic) want to do this? So go to Rand Paul website and you see ‘Fire Dr. Fauci’ with a little box that says, ‘Contribute here.’ You can do $5, $10, $20, $100 – so you are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain,’ Fauci accused of Paul during the hearing.
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham played that clip during an interview with Senator Paul on Tuesday evening and pointed out that Fauci’s position in government has also led to his own personal and financial gain. She asked Paul about the clip: ‘Your reaction to that? You know, he’s had a documentary made about him, a book deal, been on magazine covers and cool Ray Ban shades – .’
‘Didn’t he win an Emmy, also?’ Paul interjected in jest.
‘But no, we want people to go to RandPaul.com if they want to get rid of Tony Fauci. It’s a political thing,’ Paul confirmed. ‘He is a political creature.’
‘We think he should be put up on charges, but he’s not going to until there is an intervening election, so elections do make a difference,’ he continued. ‘I think he is a menace. I think he has lied to the American public. I think that he funded the lab in Wuhan – that in all likelihood this virus came from. I think he’s ignored natural immunity. I think he has told people to wear cloth masks when they don’t work.
‘I think he’s abusing his office,’ Paul said to Ingraham. ‘So, yes, we would go after him personally because he attacked others personally with his office.’
Last week, Paul got into a heated debate with NIAID Director Anthony Fauci during a Senate hearing on the Biden administration’s COVID response
In a separate interview with Martha MacCallum on Tuesday, Paul pushed his claims that Fauci funded the Wuhan lab.
‘[Fauci] funded the lab,’ Paul insisted. ‘He tried to obscure the idea that he was giving money to the lab and then he steadfastly, for two years, said it wasn’t gain-of-function, that they weren’t taking viruses that don’t exist in nature, creating them and creating viruses that are so dangerous that they could actually wipe out a portion of humanity.’
‘He continues to deny that if this came from the lab – yes, he’s culpable,’ Paul added.
‘So when you ask him to investigate it, he’s not exactly interested. He has a conflict of interest because it came from the lab.’
Fauci was caught on hot mic during the Health Committee hearing Tuesday calling Senator Roger Marshall a ‘moron’ after the Republican lawmaker accused him of hiding finances.
The immunologist responded to Marshall after telling him many times his financial disclosures, including his $434,212-a-year salary, are public knowledge and following an intense showdown with his nemesis Rand Paul.
After Marshall’s time was up, the infectious disease expert could be heard sighing: ‘What a moron, Jesus Christ.’
Upon retirement, Fauci will be awarded with the largest-ever federal pension making upwards of $350,000 per year.
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