CLAY: We’re joined now by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky — appreciate him making the time to come and hang out with us — and first question for you, Senator Paul: Will you be following Dr. Fauci’s advice and testing or making sure that everyone is vaccinated that you spend time with over Christmas?

SEN. PAUL: We do it a little bit different at the Paul household. You know, my parents will have us down in Texas. We’ll have about 57 immediate family members, and we require that everyone reads the Constitution and understands the Constitution before they get admitted for family dinner. If anybody believes in vaccine mandates or any of the nonsense that Fauci promotes, they are either gonna sit at the kids’ table or have to sit outside.

BUCK: That’s the way it should be.

CLAY: Fantastic.

BUCK: Dr. Paul — Senator Paul, sorry. We go back and forth. Great titles, both. You might have heard this. We wanted to play it for you. Here is the Pfizer CEO saying, maybe a fourth shot actually would be a good idea.

ALBERT BOURLA: I think we will make the fourth dose. With the previous, I was projecting that that would be only 12 months off the third dose. With Omicron we need to wait and see, because we have very little information. We may need it faster.

BUCK: Doctor Paul — Senator Paul. Sorry. I keep doing that.

SEN. PAUL: (chuckles)

BUCK: But it’s good since we’re talking medical stuff. Why should we think that we’re not gonna end up getting shots forever and for some people maybe four shots in the first 12 months?

SEN. PAUL: The first thing to think about is: Is the person talking to you a disinterested party? Now, if the guy makes…? What do you think this guy makes, 20, $30 million a year? He makes more by selling you more stuff, and he’s telling you the stuff he sells you that you need more of and that it works and that you ought to take it more often.

That’s sort of why we need independent people who don’t have a monetary gain in giving you the advice. So, no. He should really just be quiet, and nobody should pay any attention to this guy. The one thing I would ask — and I am an independent voice. I don’t invest in any of these companies or have any investment in this. What I would say is, “Instead of saying we should get a booster of his old vaccine, they have a vaccine for the Delta variant.”

What we’re finding is there are many illnesses that are escaping this vaccine. It doesn’t prevent infection. It may prevent serious illness, but what would happen if we actually had switched three months ago to the Delta variant vaccine? They have it. It’s already there and they’re studying it. How come it hasn’t come forward?

Biden was gonna do all these good things in record time Trump came up with it, allowed the vaccine to get through. We have a Delta variant. They’ve had it for months now. What are they doing? Where are we in the trials of it? Has anybody compared it to the wild one? And instead of just blanketly saying, “Buy my booster shot and you can take it this month and you’ll probably get it next month.

“And you’ll take it every month for the rest of your life,” why don’t we find out, one, whether you need it. It may be that the two vaccines you’ve already taken may be enough to prevent serious illness. Is there really a study showing that we have less serious illness? They say you get some more antibodies produced, which is true. But do we know that when you take the booster, you’ll have less severe illness than if you’ve only taken the two vaccines?

I don’t know that that’s definitely proven. But also, what about the Delta variant vaccine? Does it work? Does it work any better? What do we have to do to speed up the approval process? We get a flu vaccine every year. How come we’re not doing better at allowing a new vaccine to come forward if it would work better?

CLAY: Senator Paul, first of all, thanks for referencing the Constitution and also thanks for being a part of the Senate voting 52 to 48 last night to reject Joe Biden’s covid vaccine mandate for private businesses over a hundred employees. For people out there who are following this story somewhat and maybe saw this. Why is it significant what the Senate voted last night, and what will its the impact be in your own mind?

SEN. PAUL: Well, all 50 Republicans were together against the mandate and two moderate Democrats. So I think that does send a signal that there’s a significant part of the public that thinks it’s wrong to fire people who don’t choose to do what you think they ought to do, that somebody… Just think of the presumptuousness of people on the left who think they know what’s best for us, and then they would presume to tell people that they have to fire us if we don’t obey what their opinion is on what kind of medical care we seek.

It’s also incredibly insulting for doctors and nurses who took care of all of us over the last year — and they literally risked their lives every day to take care of covid patients. A lot of these doctors and nurses got covid last year. They now have immunity. All of the studies — and these people read the studies — indicate that their immunity’s just as good as a vaccine or better.

And yet despite the science, in the face of the science, we’re gonna actually mandate that they either take a vaccine that they don’t need or be fired. I don’t know. I just think that’s incredibly insulting. It’s sort of like, “Oh, yeah, you took care of us, but you’re yesterday’s trash and we’re just going to dispose of you without any consideration for your bravery and your service.” Same for policemen and firemen.

They’ve been out there doing their job. Many of them are young and fairly healthy. But many of them got covid and survived and have immunity, but we’re gonna fire them if they don’t obey some Democratic edict. It’s awful, and people ought to continue to push back, and this is one step forward. It won’t become law because Biden would veto it. But it’s still worth showing the public that a significant number of their elected officials think it’s a terrible idea to force people to take a vaccine.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator, you are one of the very few people who has been able to actually ask Dr. Fauci real questions in a forum where he had to at least evade publicly if not answer publicly. Where do you think this is all going now? We keep trying to see what the end state here is. And I’m hearing about a whole new round for a new vaccine, essentially, in March.

They’re trying to roll out, talking about four doses. We’re up to, what is it now, 42%, according to Johns Hopkins in faces nationwide from even a week ago? Wow, that’s quite a jump: 42% seven-day average up from a week ago. That’s substantial. What happens here? Where do we go?

SEN. PAUL: In a free society each individual would make their own decisions, but the problem is we now live in collectivist society where medicine has become collectivized or socialized. All the decision-making is made by one person. Fauci controls all of the funding. People are blackmailed and extorted and feel like they cannot give their opinion, or he will take their money from them, and so it really is a terrible situation.

But this is the same problem you have when you centralize authority in an economy. If the central planner makes a mistake, the whole economy suffers for it. When power is dispersed among all the individual consumers, doctors, patients, then people can sort of choose their opinion, choose a second opinion — and you will say get innovation, because some doctors might try one treatment, then it turns out it’s working.

One of the things they’re talking about right now is an anti-depressant, Fluvoxamine, and it looks like it also works as an anti-inflammatory. But instead of looking for innovation on this, you have Fauci and others immediately clamor to shut down any sort of studies. There are studies on ivermectin right now. They are in clinical trials approved by the NIH.

And yet CNN and these other ridiculous, biased networks will tell you it’s some terrible misuse of the drug, when it’s actually in a trial with the NIH right now, and we don’t yet know the answer. I don’t know. We’re in a bad situation right now where we’ve so centralized the authority making that many people are suffering, and there still are some big questions.

While I do advise taking the vaccine if you’re at risk and think it lowers your death rate and your hospitalization, there still are some questions. More people died this year even though we have now vaccinated 97% of people over 75, 99% of people between age 64 and 75, 87% of people between 50 and 64, and yet more people died this year.

So there are some head scratching things. Now, they’re just blaming it on the unvaccinated. But we had nursing home in Connecticut the other day: 89 people, 87 were vaccinated and they all got it again, and eight of them died. So this isn’t as simple as just blaming it on the unvaccinated. I think the vaccine’s not working very well anymore for even those who are vaccinated. It might still help to some extent, but they should tell us why we haven’t adapted and gone to another vaccine like we do for the flu each year.

CLAY: Senator Paul, I’m in Tennessee. I know you’re in Kentucky. Buck’s up in New York City. It seems like we have created red states where most people, for the most part, are back to pretty much normalcy. The only time I would know that covid really existed still is if I go to an airport and people have to put masks on. But many blue states…

I don’t know if you saw the video of the kindergarteners in Portland, Oregon, who were forced to eat outside sitting on buckets, socially distanced in 40-degree weather. What’s it going to take to the entire country to get back to normalcy? Is it an ass kicking for the Democrats in 2022 that finally lets them know that people are fed up with all of their shenanigans? What is the solution here to the country embracing normalcy? What do you think?

SEN. PAUL: I think electorally there’s a huge wave building. You saw it in Virginia. You saw it almost happen in New Jersey. But it’s gonna be happening at the staple legislative level, too, because people are tired. Most of the mandates who come from governors often without the approval of the state legislature. But you’re gonna see state legislative offices change in some of these blue states.

You may even see a blue state turn red over some of this. The other thing that’s gonna happen is, if you’re hopelessly and helplessly confined behind a mask or behind these mandates in a blue state, people are gonna move. They’ve been moving because of high taxes, but now people are gonna be moving because of loss of personal liberty.

And there have been some champions. I think Ron DeSantis has been a real champion down there not only in freedom but also in treatment. Have you ever heard Dr. Fauci talk about treating covid? No! He thinks wearing a mask all over your face is gonna somehow save you. But the thing I, people are still getting it; few have been vaccinated.

There is a treatment. The monoclonal antibodies is probably the best treatment out there, but you have to get it before you go to the hospital ’cause Dr. Fauci and his minions have forbidden you get the drug if you’re in the hospital. So your listeners need to know, if any of them get sick —

CLAY: Sorry to cut you off there, but when you just said that, why would they be forbidding monoclonal antibodies in hospitals?

SEN. PAUL: Well, they took a truism and then applied it with a mandate to screw things up. The truism is this: The sooner you take the monoclonal antibodies, the better they work. So if you’ve had symptoms for less than five days and you take them, it’s like a 70-80% reduction in hospitalization and death. Let’s say you wait 10 days to take it.

For one reason or another, you didn’t get to a doctor, or you were more resistant to going in. You come in on day 10, they admit you to the hospital, they say, “Oh, it’s too late,” and so it doesn’t work as well, but it’s not zero. So, for example, on day 5 of symptoms it might be 70-80% reduction in death. Let’s say you’re on day 11 and it’s 10% reduction in death. But they tell you, “Tomorrow you’re probably on the ventilator and you have a third chance of dying.” Wouldn’t you want to take the 10% chance that it might help you?

CLAY: Yes.

SEN. PAUL: It really would be your choice between and you your doctor and in a largely — very high fatality, once you’re on the ventilator, you know, shouldn’t you have the right try it? But Fauci has so controlled — such control over — this that doctors are threatened with being fireed.

The big corporations that own the hospitals are afraid of him and the rules, they’re afraid of the liability if they don’t treat you according to the government mandate. But this has never happened in the past. In the past doctors would try a lot of different things as people were dying, and then they would sometimes discover some things that put together would work.

But the bottom line is the monoclonal antibodies and likely steroids are your best hope at some point. The other thing they have put the kibosh on have disdained and won’t approve is inhaled steroids. There’s a doctor in Texas by the name of Bartlett, and he’s treated a lot of people as outpatient with this, and this is the treatment they give you when you’re on the ventilator. They give you high-dose IV steroids.

But what he said is if they’re given in the late stages, maybe if we give inhaled steroids like you take for asthma — that maybe these little inhalers, if you take them in the first several days of your symptoms — that it might prevent you from getting bad enough to go on the ventilator.

And by golly we ought to be studying this. But we’ve known this for a year and a half, and Fauci steadfastly refuses to change the algorithm. But also, I haven’t seen any of them wiling to entertain the notion of, “Hey, maybe we should study inhaled steroids at an earlier stage.”

BUCK: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, sir, always illuminating thanks for making time for us.

SEN. PAUL: Thanks, guys.