Dr. Abdul El-Sayed spent the spring of 2020 calling Americans who went to parks and beaches reckless spreaders of a deadly virus. He branded anti-lockdown protesters allies of the coronavirus itself. Then George Floyd died, and El-Sayed pivoted, arguing that mass street demonstrations without masks were not just acceptable but necessary, because "racism is a public health crisis too."
The contradiction sits at the center of El-Sayed's public record as he campaigns for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan, where Just the News reported he is a slight frontrunner in the primary. His opponents include Rep. Haley Stevens and Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow.
El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
El-Sayed, a former Detroit city government health official and Columbia medical school graduate who received a Soros Fellowship, leaned hard on his health credentials throughout the pandemic. He promoted his views on his "America Dissected" podcast, gave multiple interviews, and fired off dozens of tweets that have since been deleted but were reviewed by Just the News through web archives.
The timeline is damning in its precision. On March 10, 2020, El-Sayed tweeted: "Public health is politics. Public health is politics. Public health is politics. As coronavirus spreads, remember that our response to this epidemic cannot be separated from our politics."
Four days later, he warned people away from gyms. By March 16, he was pushing the hashtag #StayHome. On March 17, he scolded young people for partying. On March 18, he attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for allowing beachgoers to enjoy the outdoors.
"Good public policy can save lives right now. But good public policy takes leadership. @GovRonDeSantis needs to step up and shut down the massive public gatherings on Florida's beaches right now."
The next day, El-Sayed wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian calling for stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, arguing for "eliminating congregation in restaurants, bars, and clubs, as well as potentially locking down communities with major outbreaks."
El-Sayed did not stop at policy arguments. He turned personal. On March 25, 2020, he tweeted: "Don't be a #COVidiot: #StayHome." Two days later, he ended a radio interview on WDET 101.9fm by urging "everybody" to "stay safe, stay home, save lives."
On March 29, he praised Dr. Anthony Fauci as "the Gen. George Patton of our time."
He compared the pandemic to the September 11 attacks, repeatedly. "Today the 40,000th American died of #COVID19, which we didn't know existed 6 months ago, only hit the U.S. 3 months ago. That's like a 9/11 attack every 10 days for three months," he tweeted. On March 31, 2020, he posted: "#COVID19 has taken over 3000 American lives, more than 9/11."
In an interview with the socialist magazine Jacobin published April 2, 2020, El-Sayed was asked what Americans could do to "counteract the impact of coronavirus." His answer was unequivocal.
"Number one, we've got to beat this virus, which means that public health has to be front and center. People need to stay home and protect themselves and their families."
The very next day, April 3, 2020, he made his position even more blunt: "Mask or no mask, #StayTheFHome."
In an interview published April 7 by the left-wing outlet Current Affairs, El-Sayed endorsed "mandating work from home, shutting down nonessential services, limiting mass transit." He described these government mandates as "important."
Democrats facing scrutiny for their conduct in office is hardly a new phenomenon. A Florida Democrat recently faced a rare public ethics hearing over alleged theft, illustrating a broader pattern of accountability questions within the party.
El-Sayed reserved special contempt for Americans who protested Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home orders. On April 15, 2020, he tweeted that the protesters were effectively siding with the disease itself.
"Make no mistake: this was a protest IN FAVOR OF #coronavirus. I mean, it's the only thing that benefitted from it."
The next day, he criticized then-President Trump for suggesting the economy could reopen, arguing that such talk "undermines the key message right now: #SocialDistance." He approvingly played a clip of Gov. Whitmer urging Michiganders to stay home, then once more criticized Americans for lying outside and going to parks and beaches.
For weeks, El-Sayed's message was absolute: outdoor gatherings spread the virus, and anyone who participated was irresponsible at best, complicit in death at worst. No exceptions. No nuance. No cost-benefit analysis of what lockdowns were doing to livelihoods, mental health, or children's education.
George Floyd died in police custody on May 25, 2020. Within days, massive protests swept American cities. Many involved thousands of people packed shoulder to shoulder, often without masks, in exactly the kind of outdoor gatherings El-Sayed had spent months condemning.
El-Sayed did not apply the same standard. Instead, he joined a chorus of public health experts who defended the BLM demonstrations, arguing that defeating racism was itself a public health issue comparable to the coronavirus, and that mass protests were therefore justified and necessary.
The shift was not subtle. The same man who called beachgoers reckless, branded anti-lockdown protesters pro-virus, and told Americans to stay home "mask or no mask" now embraced open-air, unmasked gatherings numbering in the tens of thousands.
The logical gap was enormous. If outdoor crowds spread the virus, and El-Sayed had spent weeks insisting they did, then BLM protests posed the same epidemiological risk as a beach party or an anti-lockdown rally. The virus does not check protest signs before deciding whether to transmit.
But El-Sayed and many of his fellow public health voices treated the question as settled: some causes were worth the risk. Others were not. The science, it turned out, bent to the politics, exactly the framework El-Sayed himself had laid out on March 10 when he declared, "Public health is politics."
The broader pattern of Democrats facing federal scrutiny for alleged misconduct continues to grow, and voters are paying attention to whether public figures apply rules consistently or only when convenient.
El-Sayed's COVID record is not the only baggage he carries into the Senate primary. Just the News previously reported that El-Sayed is a years-long protégé of controversial Muslim activist Linda Sarsour, whose endorsement during his failed 2018 bid for Michigan governor helped elevate him from relative obscurity.
The outlet also reported that El-Sayed promoted a hoax hate crime murder, claiming it had been driven by anti-Muslim bigotry. A jury later found the killing had been committed by a Muslim husband. El-Sayed has not publicly addressed the discrepancy.
His deleted tweets, reviewed through web archives, suggest an awareness that his pandemic-era commentary could become a liability. Deleting the posts does not erase the record, but it does raise questions about whether El-Sayed is running from positions he once held with missionary zeal.
The Democratic Party has no shortage of candidates whose past conduct raises uncomfortable questions. Leaked texts from Sen. John Fetterman recently exposed internal party tensions, and the pattern of saying one thing publicly while doing another privately is hardly limited to one candidate or one state.
El-Sayed's COVID flip is not an isolated case. Across the country, public health officials who demanded lockdowns, school closures, and mask mandates in 2020 quietly abandoned those positions when the political winds shifted. Few have been held accountable. Fewer still have acknowledged the damage their policies caused, the lost learning, the shuttered businesses, the isolation-driven mental health crisis.
What makes El-Sayed's case particularly instructive is how explicitly he stated the framework. "Public health is politics," he said at the outset. He was right, just not in the way he intended. His own record proves that the "science" he invoked was always filtered through political preference. Beachgoers were a menace. BLM marchers were heroes. The virus, presumably, understood the difference.
The Democratic establishment's broader troubles extend well beyond pandemic hypocrisy. A former top aide to Xavier Becerra recently pleaded guilty to charges tied to a scheme to steal funds from a dormant campaign account, a reminder that the party's credibility problems run from policy contradictions to outright alleged corruption.
Michigan voters will decide whether El-Sayed's pandemic record matters. The Real Clear Polling average shows him as the slight frontrunner in the Democratic primary. If he wins the nomination, his deleted tweets and reversed positions will face a general-election audience far less sympathetic to lockdown nostalgia.
Meanwhile, DOJ efforts involving possible indictments of Democratic lawmakers continue to draw attention, reinforcing the impression that the party's leadership class operates under a different set of rules than the people it governs.
El-Sayed told Americans that going to the gym, the beach, or a protest against government overreach could get people killed. He called them idiots for trying. Then he decided a different kind of protest was worth the risk, not because the science changed, but because the cause did.
That is not public health. That is politics wearing a lab coat. And Michigan deserves to know the difference before it sends this man to the Senate.