08/01/2026
"You were vaccinated. Multiple times." A Pittsburgh chef fired that at Rand Paul this week, in reply to the senator's post claiming "we all knew infection was the best protection."
Paul's post went up Tuesday, the day before he chaired the hearing where Anthony Fauci took the Fifth. He paired it with an AI cartoon of a grinning Fauci getting his shot, under the headline "Did You Get Your Fauci Ouchie?"
A sitting United States senator, a doctor, posted that.
His name is Joe Gera, he's an award-winning chef, and Thursday night he posted the full version:
"You were vaccinated. Multiple times. How do I know? Because I cooked an event you attended in early 2022. The venue's policy was: if you wanted to attend unmasked, you had to be vaccinated (this didn't stop until April that year at this venue). You also had to RSVP well in advance and provide a negative COVID test before the event. So if you were there, you met those requirements. But by all means, keep bullsh*tting."
The post has 1.9 million views and counting. Paul has not responded. This is a man who has spent five years telling America he refuses the vaccine because infection gave him natural immunity.
But you don't actually even need the chef. The science Paul is lying about was settled years ago, and it was settled in Kentucky.
In 2021, the CDC studied Paul's own constituents: Kentuckians who'd already had COVID. The ones who stayed unvaccinated were more than twice as likely to get infected again as the ones who got the shot. Infection alone wasn't the best protection. It wasn't even close.
The experiment Rand Paul keeps describing was actually run, on the people he represents, and his answer lost.
He knows this. Every press release his office sends goes out under the name "Dr. Rand Paul."
And there's one more wrinkle. In January 2022, the exact window the chef describes, Paul was introducing legislation to repeal Washington, D.C.'s vaccine requirements for restaurants and venues. If Gera's memory is right, the senator was quietly complying with the exact kind of mandate he was introducing bills that same month to abolish.
The chef wasn't done, either. He came back for Ron Johnson's vaccine claims next, and then RFK Jr.'s. In a follow-up, he explained why it took him a whole day to get around to a United States senator: "I waited almost a day to do this because A, I'm busy, B have a stress fracture in my foot."
A working chef with a stress fracture in his foot, holding a United States senator to account. Somebody had to do it.
