Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) again on Thursday criticized the CCP virus lockdowns this time saying they are arbitrary, suggesting that instead of lockdowns communities should be allowed to develop immunity until a vaccine is approved.
The Republican senator wants the vaccines to be released as soon as possible and for more people to participate in the trials.
“What they should do is, if they want to continue the trials, instead of 40,000 people why don’t we make them 4 million, so at least another 3.5 million could be enrolled in the trials,” he said.
“I don’t see why you can’t have people who voluntarily want to take it, and I think there are millions who want to take it,” he added. “Let them get started and that way we can head towards immunity, combining natural immunity, and vaccinated immunity, to get to what we want to much quicker but I think waiting another four months is foolish.”
Paul has also criticized Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for suggesting, on multiple occasions, that his administration would consider mandatory masks wearing and another round of lockdowns to get the spread of the virus under control.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, who serves as director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said that while the country is locked down, people could be paid for lost wages.
Over the past several months, Congress has failed to reach an agreement on a stimulus package, including expanded unemployment benefits, stimulus payments, small business loans, and other measures. The first one was passed in March, including $1,200 payments, loans, and $600-per-week federal weekly unemployment benefits.
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” Osterholm told Yahoo. “If we did that, then we could lockdown for four-to-six weeks.”
Trump administration officials said on Nov. 18 that a safe and effective vaccine is a few weeks from being distributed first, to the most vulnerable, and then more broadly, pending approval.
