Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul criticized his colleagues for believing that Americans should “submit to the government” when it comes to taking vaccines during Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s second confirmation hearing Thursday.
Kennedy has faced backlash for his previous statements casting doubt on the efficacy of certain vaccines. Paul used his questioning time at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing to argue for a more nuanced approach to vaccines rather than demanding Americans blindly obey their government.
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“I think the discussion over vaccines is so over-simplified and dumbed-down that we never really get to real truths and it’s why people up here are so separated from real people at home. So we talk about Hepatitis B. It’s a terrible disease,” Paul said. “It could lead to liver failure as the chairman said, but the reason you have distrust from people at home and why they don’t believe anything you say and they don’t believe government at all is you’re telling my kid to take a Hepatitis B vaccine when he’s one day old. You get it through drug use and sexually transmitted. That’s how you get Hepatitis B, but you’re telling me my kid has to take it at one day old … that’s not science.”
Paul asserted he vaccinated all of his children and that he thinks “vaccines are one of the modern miracles beyond all pale.” However, he said he decided to “wait” on giving his children the Hepatitis B vaccine until they started school.
“Does that make me an awful person? Does that make the an anti-vaxxer because I questioned the government dictate of whether I do it? And I’m not speaking for anybody else, I’m only speaking for myself, but for goodness sakes, let’s have an honest debate about these things,” he added.
Paul also noted that COVID-19 affected older people significantly more than youth.
“If you don’t acknowledge that, you’re committing malpractice you’re showing your ignorance, if you say a six-month-old, must be mandated to get it,” he said of the vaccine. “The science is not there. So all this blather about the science says this and the sciences says that, no, it doesn’t. The science actually shows that no healthy child in America died from COVID.”
Paul, who is a doctor, suggested he would absolutely recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for unhealthy older people, but not for healthy young children.
“See, these are the nuances you’re unwilling to talk about because there’s such a belief in submission, submit to the government. Do what you’re told. There is no discussion. there ought to be a debate,” he said. “You’re not going to let him have the debate because you’re just going to criticize and say, ‘It is this and admit to it or we’re not going to appoint you,’ but it’s more complicated than that, and this is why people distrust government. Because you’re unwilling to have these conversations.”
Paul received an applause after his roughly five-minute speech.
Kennedy told NBC News in November that he would not “take away anybody’s vaccines,” but wants to allow Americans to makes individual choices on whether to take them.
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