As Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed campaigns for the U.S. Senate, his calls during the COVID-19 pandemic for renewed lockdowns, business fines, and expanded vaccination are likely to face scrutiny.  During his failed 2021 campaign for Michigan governor, El-Sayed said he would have ordered another statewide shutdown to slow the spread of COVID. “There’s no question,” El-Sayed said when asked whether, as governor, he would shut the state down. “If you look at where the science and where the science has been. The CDC itself has suggested that we ought to shut things down. And we know that shutdowns in the past have been successful whether it was in the Spring or the Fall. This is a responsibility.”  El-Sayed proposed what he described as a two- to three-week “pause” and said that if businesses did not comply, they should face “a very annoying but real fine.”  “I get that people are sick of this but it’s the right thing to do to stop the spread of this contagious variant of the virus. What is the alternative?” He also argued that systemic racism and poverty contributed to challenges in distributing vaccines in cities such as Detroit. “We know the biggest challenge to delivering public health in a community like Detroit, because of systemic racism and poverty it creates, is the last mile problem,” he said. “You can offer a vaccine in places…but we all now that is not really where people actually live and we got to get them out to people’s doorstep.”  To address vaccine hesitancy, El-Sayed proposed working with trusted community leaders, including pastors and neighborhood organizations. “What I’d like to see, right, and this is a big lift, right, is more focus on taking on the vaccine hesitancy, whether it’s a block club captain or a local pastor and thinking about that last mile problem by putting vaccines on wheels and getting them out into people’s communities,” he said.  During the pandemic, El-Sayed also launched a twice-weekly podcast to keep listeners informed about COVID-19 and public health policy. At the time, he described himself as “a physician and former city health commissioner,” while also serving as a CNN contributor focused on public health issues.  El-Sayed’s current Senate platform includes support for Medicare for All, codifying abortion rights, and expanding access to so-called “gender-affirming care.” His campaign has not specified whether he supports El-Sayed did not specify if he supports “gender reassignment surgeries” for children.