Paul said he would make an amendment separating Fauci’s work into three separate roles with a five-year term.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul announced Monday he is introducing an amendment to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci from the position he has held since 1984, accusing the medical examiner of “abusing” his power during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is the latest step in a war of words between the two main rivals that has lasted almost the entire pandemic since it began in March 2020.
“We have learned a lot in the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no individual should be considered a ‘master dictator’. No individual should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans,” Paul wrote in a Fox News article.
“To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never again imposed on the American people, I will introduce an amendment to remove Dr. Anthony Fauci from his position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and divide his power into three separate new institutions.”
Paul said the US Code amendment would be put to a vote as early as this week.
“Each of these three institutions will be headed by a director appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term. This will create accountability and oversight for a taxpayer-funded position that has largely abused its power and been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he explained.
The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 960,000 Americans since it began.
His two years were marked by guerrilla battles over medical requirements such as lockdowns, vaccine requirements and mask rules.
Paul, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the sweeping public health rulings, criticized Fauci as “an unelected bureaucrat with too much power”.
Fauci and Paul often clashed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“No one person should have the exclusive power to dictate science, especially if that person has never followed science. I’ve said this from the very beginning, and I’ve been proven right again, and again, and again. About masks, quarantine, schools, natural immunity and all that,” said the Republican from Kentucky.
He cited a CBS interview in late November 2021 that sparked outrage from the Republican Party, during which Fauci said his critics, who are all Republicans, were actually “anti-science.”
“I will just do my job and save lives, and they will lie,” he said then.
Paul, who trained and practiced as an ophthalmologist before being elected to Congress, said Monday: “I have been a physician for over 33 years. In all the years that I have studied and practiced medicine, I have never met anyone with the audacity to proclaim himself a “science” and portray anyone who opposes him as an “assaulter of science.” That is, until Dr. Fauci became the prime dictator of COVID.”
“If Fauci had just been a family doctor in Peoria, his mistakes would not have been so catastrophic. But since Fauci is allowed to be the medical czar for the whole country, his mistakes are amplified across the country,” he added.
“When Fauci misinforms the public that cloth masks work, he risks the health of anyone who believes a cloth mask will protect them when caring for a spouse or relative with COVID.”
When a highly contagious variant of Omicron spread across the US and other countries in late December and early this year, public health experts urged Americans to wear KN95 or N95 surgical masks rather than cloth ones, arguing that they did little to stop the new strain.
“Cloth masks are nothing more than facial decorations. There is no place for them in the light of Omicron,” CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen said late last year.
In mid-January, Fauci noted in the same issue, “I recommend that you purchase the highest quality mask that you can tolerate and that is available to you.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of masks now, which were out of stock some time ago. If you can tolerate N95, do so. If you want KN95, fine.”
For some time after the start of the pandemic, U.S. health officials urged Americans to cover their faces with everything they could to help, with the exception of surgical masks, which were in short supply and needed by hospital workers facing an influx of COVID patients.
As the workload has eased, the CDC has changed its guidance to encourage people to find the best masks available.
Republicans seized on this to blame US officials for the flop based on their agenda, not science.
In his op-ed, Paul also repeated allegations that Fauci allowed NIAID to fund controversial research to increase functionality in Wuhan, China, which he and other GOP lawmakers have cited as the source of the pandemic.
When Fauci decides that he alone will define and fund dangerous “functionality acquisition” research, his disregard for the possibility of leakage from the lab is felt around the world,” Paul wrote.
“The biggest lesson we have learned in the last two years is that no single person should have such unlimited power. And my amendment, which will be passed this week, will finally prosecute and fire Dr. Fauci.”
Cases of COVID-19 across the country are at their lowest level since last summer, when President Joe Biden’s promised “freedom summer” was derailed by the Delta strain.
The number of new cases reported on Sunday stood at 6,382, according to the New York Times tracker.
The average rate of new cases has fallen by 48 percent over the past two weeks.
The number of hospitalizations and hospitalizations in intensive care units fell just as sharply – 43% and 46%, respectively.
Mortality fell by almost a third in the same window, by 31 percent.