What Abdul El-Sayed Did During Covid

Abdul El-Sayed claims to champion the lived experiences of young voters on social media and college campuses.

But the young voters he courts today were the students he asked to sacrifice their classrooms, friendships, milestones and normal childhood and adolescence under the very policies he defended.

Gen Z, in particular the class of 2020, are now young voters who lost irreplaceable memories—canceled graduations, proms, and high school sports—to school lockdowns. Abdul El-Sayed supported those draconian policies.

Just one week into Whitmer’s statewide lockdown orders, in March 2020, El-Sayed used the pandemic for political purposes, citing the underlying reason as “epidemic of insecurity” and advocating for Medicare for All, universal income, while calling for aggressive lockdowns and mandates.

None of this stopped him from supporting and participating in BLM marches during the height of the pandemic, however, as he described “racism as a public health crisis” and said “these (BLM) protests are a necessary public health intervention” equivocating social distancing to protesting as a both “saving lives”.

Just two months later, in August, Larry King asked El-Sayed about college students returning to campus. He called the idea “absurd” and said “colleges and universities are not the most important institutions to keep open right now” stating the Trump administration was more concerned with politics than “science.”

How did science support public protests but not school?

In April 2021, as Michigan experienced another Covid surge, El-Sayed appeared on WKAR’s Off the Record and was asked whether he would shut down the state if he were governor.

“There is no question,” El-Sayed answered.

He praised Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s shutdowns and argued that Michigan should impose another “two- or three-week” pause.

“The viable approach is a lockdown,” he concluded.

As schools slowly reopened, El-Sayed did not endorse an unconditional return to normal. In August 2021, El-Sayed continued to advocate for mask mandates for children ages 2 years and older saying, “The right scientific choice here is to mandate masks” despite the Whitmer Administration moving to a “strong recommendation” rather than a mandate.

He blamed closures not primarily on unions or administrators, but on America’s failure to maintain an adequate supply of Covid precautions.

El-Sayed also consistently supported vaccine mandates and criticized police officers resisting vaccination, calling their opposition “hypocritical,” just over a year after he reportedly called to “defund the police” and supported protesting in the middle of a pandemic.

It wasn’t until January 2022 that El-Sayed’s rhetoric on school lockdowns shifted but he still advocated for universal masking and testing, citing learning loss and the disproportionate consequences of closures for Black and disadvantaged students.

“Paper” Doctor Abdul Sayed has never treated a patient, passed a board, and doesn’t have a medical license in Michigan.

But let’s not forget what he has done—served as the face of public health during Michigan’s notorious, excessive lockdowns and advocated for even harsher policies than Whitmer.

In his own words, “public health is politics.”