Dr. Peter Hotez sides with one of the nation’s top doctors after a showdown between Republican Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci on Capitol Hill about masks.
“Dr. Fauci is absolutely right, Senator Paul is absolutely wrong, and that’s the way it has been for the past 14 months,” said Hotez.
Paul argued that people are not at risk for Covid after recovery or vaccination, and therefore do not need to wear masks. The Kentucky Senator also claimed that Fauci wore two masks just for show.
The White House chief medical adviser on Thursday emphatically pushed back against Paul’s comments during a Senate hearing examining the national response to the coronavirus.
“For the record, may I say masks are not theater,” Fauci said. I disagree with you at all. ‘
In a Thursday night interview in “The News with Shepard Smith,” Hotez noted that “masks may need to be removed,” but it is too early and “we are still trying to understand the full performance characteristics of the vaccines.”
“We’re only now getting a glimpse that it interrupts the asymptomatic transmission,” said Hotez.
The debate over masks comes because nearly half of the country is going through a wave of Covid cases. Twenty-three states reported an increase in the number of cases, as a seven-day average, in the past week, according to Johns Hopkins. Half a dozen states are also seeing the trend of hospital admissions, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, told host Shepard Smith that the spikes could be due to highly transferable new variants.
“The key now is to vaccinate as soon as possible before the variants,” said Hotez.