Ron Paul’s son, Sen. Rand Paul, tested positive for COVID-19. This announcement came only a few days after Rand’s dad Ron wrote an op-ed piece entitled “The Coronavirus Hoax.” Paul’s opinion piece was classic Ron Paul, taking an important premise—something most progressives would agree with—and then turning it into fact-free, narcissistic, racist logic.
Paul warned against Americans allowing our current public health crisis to lead to a loss of personal freedoms by way of government legislation, à la the Patriot Act. However, this basic premise was quickly smothered under a pile of Ron Paul cow pie as Paul explained that calls for “social distancing” by every public official, scientist, virologist, and infectious disease specialist were a lot of hooey.
In fact, racist newsletter editor Ron Paul explained that instead of protecting the public, “what people like Fauci and the other fearmongers are demanding will likely make the disease worse.” While Paul explains that he believes the disease is harmful, he also continues to question how deadly a disease it could be, saying there isn’t “any scientific basis” for the assertion that COVID-19 is much more deadly than the “seasonal flu.”
With public health officials hoping to flatten the curve of the virus’s impact by trying to get shelter-in-place orders enacted, Paul believes we are likely making ourselves weaker for the disease. “The martial law they dream about will leave people hunkered down inside their homes instead of going outdoors or to the beach where the sunshine and fresh air would help boost immunity.”
Paul finishes his essay of idiocy by putting the word “threat” in quotations to signify that the virus is really just hype. This attitude from Big Daddy Paul is possibly one of the reasons his even stupider son, Sen. Rand Paul, has been one of the elected officials slowing the progress of emergency relief legislation over the last couple of weeks.
It’s also a perfect encapsulation of the arrogance, privilege, and hubris allowing certain public figures to confidently spew ignorance to the public. Let us pretend that Ron Paul isn’t simply the craven, cynical, narcissistic misanthrope we know him to be. His logic is that our Republican government and its awful response to the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 is the result of the government’s rejection of the fearmongering done by the media. According to Paul, scientists do not have a definitive understanding yet of how deadly this respiratory affliction actually is.
For Ron Paul, this means the fact that the virus’s very well-documented spread across numerous nations and the resulting complications to those country’s economies and public health infrastructures—with varying degrees of “death rates”—means that the most responsible thing for American politicians to do is continue to go to beaches and stuff because the sun is good and maybe it would help us fight the disease.
Paul is right about one thing: Any legislation Congress and the Executive Branch of our government considers during a crisis like the one we are facing today should be discussed in terms of how long the most extreme limitations will be in place. But that’s a long single sentence, and Paul and his worthless offspring are not up to the task of arguing it.
