Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be “impeached” over his handling over the coronavirus pandemic.
“Many of the things we have done have not worked, and the people we are lauding are people who have actually made catastrophic decisions,” the Kentucky Republican told the “Fox News Rundown” podcast.
“I think Gov. Cuomo should be impeached for what he did, for the disastrous decision he made to send patients with coronavirus back to nursing homes,” he added. “Virtually half of his people who died were in the nursing homes.”
Mr. Paul’s comments come as New York is reporting record lows in positive coronavirus cases and deaths, while other states like Georgia and Texas have seen significant increases since reopening their economies. Mr. Cuomo has declared victory over the virus, despite his state holding one of the highest death rates in the country, second only to New Jersey.
Mr. Paul said the current trend in New York has “nothing to do with” Mr. Cuomo’s leadership but the “level of immunity” that potentially occurred in heavily populated areas like New York City.
“I think it has to do with New York City, in particular, has now achieved a level of immunity, that there is somewhat of a tamping down of the virus because of the level of immunity,” he said, adding that he believes the same thing is happening in places like Stockholm, Sweden, and northern Italy.
Mr. Paul lamented that the widespread lockdowns likely crippled the economy without good reason.
“We’ve seen surges in coronaviruses in the midst of lockdown,” he said. “New York had a lockdown and had 30,000 people die. New York had the worst death rate of any place in the world amidst a lockdown, so perhaps a lockdown didn’t do any good and perhaps a lockdown killed our economy, but didn’t do anything to stem the tide of the virus.
“So I see nothing to be admired in New York’s lockdown,” the senator added. “I see a mountain of people who died, particularly in the nursing homes.”
Mr. Paul argued that Americans should be given the freedom to “assess their own risks with regard to the virus.”
“We typically have among us tens of thousands of people who are on chemotherapy, but we don’t tell the whole country to wear masks because you might give a virus to people who are in chemotherapy,” he said. “What we do is people on chemotherapy try to be very cautious, to stay away from children with infectious diseases or others who might transmit it, but we don’t shut the entire economy down, even though there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people with depressed immune systems.
“So I think we’ve made a big mistake in the lockdown. We’ve crippled the economy, but I don’t know that we’ve done much to the virus,” Mr. Paul said.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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