‘NY made mistakes’
Fauci & Rand in COVID clash
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday said New York “made some mistakes” with COVID-19 during a heated exchange with Sen. Rand Paul, in which Fauci also defended the Empire State’s response after having been “hit very badly.”
Paul, a Kentucky Republican and libertarian, tried to cite New York state’s toll of more than 32,000 deaths as evidence that lockdowns are ineffective.
“You’ve been a big fan of Cuomo in the shutdown in New York. You’ve lauded New York for their policy. New York had the highest death rate in the world. How can we possibly be jumping up and down and saying, ‘Oh, Governor Cuomo did a great job’? He had the worst death rate in the world,” Paul said.
Fauci bristled at Paul’s premise, and the normally even-keeled immunologist grew visibly angry in his response.
“You misconstrued that, Senator, and you’ve done that repetitively in the past. They got hit very badly, they made some mistakes,” Fauci said, before praising New York’s current efforts against the virus.
Critics fault Cuomo for a controversial March 25 state order barring nursing homes from turning away coronavirus-positive patients, resulting in 6,300 infected people being housed near vulnerable elderly residents.
COVID-19 swept through New York nursing homes in March and April, killing at least 6,500 people. The true death toll could be much higher. An Associated Press analysis found that 11,000 New York nursinghome residents may have died.
Asked about Fauci saying New York made mistakes, Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi told The Post that Fauci “also complimented the governor and smacked down Rand Paul for fudging everything that happened in New York.”
Fauci is the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a White House coronavirus task-force member. He said he approves of New York’s current approach.
“Right now, if you look at what’s going on right now, the things that are going on in New York to get their test positivity 1 percent or less is because they are looking at the guidelines that we have put together from the task force of the four or five things: of masks, social distancing, outdoors more than indoors, avoiding crowds and washing hands,” he said.
The exchange began with Paul contrasting New York’s strict social restrictions with more relaxed policies in Sweden, which resisted a strict lockdown.
Sweden’s population amounts to about 54 percent of New York’s, but the Nordic nation reported fewer than 6,000 deaths — or 18 percent of New York’s fatalities.
“To those who argue that the lockdown flattened the curve in New York and New Jersey, the evidence argues otherwise,” Paul said. “New York, New Jersey wound up with the sharpest spike or highest death rate in the world . . . In contrast, Sweden had a relatively softer touch, few mandates and mostly voluntary guidelines.”
Fauci rebutted Paul, saying that lockdowns were significant.
“Compare Sweden’s death rate to other comparable Scandinavian countries, it’s worse. So I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare Sweden with us,” he said.