WASHINGTON D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Republican Senator Rand Paul sharply criticized the Biden administration’s push for vaccination and its refusal to acknowledge natural immunity during a hearing on Thursday.
“Mr. Becerra, are you familiar with an Israeli study that had 2.5 million patients and found that the vaccinated group was actually seven times more likely to get infected with COVID than the people who had gotten COVID naturally,” Paul asked Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra.
Becerra, who is tasked with overseeing the public health infrastructure for the country, said he is not familiar with the study.
“I think you might want to be if you’re going to travel the country insulting the millions of Americans, including NBA star Jonathan Isaac, who have had COVID, recovered, look at a study with 2.5 million people, and say, well, you know what, I should make the decision. Instead, you’ve called Jonathan Isaac and others, myself included, ‘flat earthers,’” Paul said.
Orlando Magic player Jonathan Isaac said on Monday that he does not plan to get jabbed because he has already been infected with COVID.
Becerra appeared virtually on September 21 to a health policy forum in Kentucky, Paul’s home state. During his comments, Becerra blamed people who have chosen not to get jabbed for the pandemic.
“Because some ‘flat earthers,’ especially those in places of influence, choose to peddle fiction, we’re losing more of our loved ones today than we were a few months ago,” Becerra said, according to Spectrum 1 News. It is not clear if Becerra specifically was talking about Paul, who has had COVID and recovered from it. The ophthalmologist has said he does not plan on getting jabbed because the natural immunity from his antibodies is stronger than the inoculation.
The senator asked Becerra if he had a science degree or a medical degree. Becerra does not have either background.
“You’re not a medical doctor. Do you have a science degree?” Paul said.
“And yet you travel the country, calling people ‘flat earthers’ who have had COVID, looked at studies of millions of people,” Paul said, “and made their own personal decision that their immunity they naturally acquired is sufficient but you presume somehow to tell over 100 million Americans who survived COVID that we have no right to determine our own medical care.”
“You alone are on high and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly and un-American.”
“You, sir, are the one ignoring the science,” Paul said. “Quit lording it over people, acting as if these people are deplorable and unwashed,” he continued, adding that “there is no more basic medical right than deciding what we inject into our bodies.”
It's official: Joe Biden has announced that his Administration will be forcing COVID vaccinations on nearly 1/3rd of American citizens, blatantly disregarding the personal objections of millions of people and moving America ever closer towards a medical dictatorship.
We cannot stand for this unprecedented overreach, and we will not submit to Biden's tyrannical public coercion efforts.
Please SIGN this urgent petition informing the President that you will NOT comply with these unconstitutional vaccine mandate orders issued by the Biden Administration, and that elected officials should act in their capacity to block these intrusive demands.
On Thursday, September 9th, Joe Biden announced the latest round of federal orders meant to further coerce large swaths of the public into getting the COVID vaccine -- many against their will.
While the legal standing of these measures is, at best, dubious, the Biden Administration appears more ready than ever to gut our individual rights and practically erase medical autonomy in our country.
This latest escalation in overreach was announced via a televised speech in which Biden outlined a new "six-point plan" that includes far more than just six avenues to achieve mass medical compliance.
Among the most egregious new federal mandates are the following:
- A requirement that all private businesses employing more than 100 people mandate their workers get the Covid-19 vaccine or submit to weekly testing (to be implemented by way of a new Department of Labor rule)
- A requirement that all federal employees and federal contractors get the COVID vaccine
- A requirement that all healthcare workers in facilities that receive reimbursement from Medicare and/or Medicaid (an estimated 17 million) get the Covid-19 vaccine without an alternative testing option
- A requirement that all Head Start teachers get the COVID vaccine
- A federal effort to lobby states to implement vaccine mandates for all school employees, and require regular testing of all students and school staff
- A federal effort to lobby entertainment venues to require proof of vaccination or testing in order to grant entry to the public
- A continuation of mask mandates on all federal properties and during interstate travel (i.e. planes, trains, buses)
All in all, these new vaccine mandates, which will go into effect within the coming weeks, will affect an estimated 100 million American workers -- 2/3rds of the entire workforce!
And, according to an administration official, violations of these unconstitutional requirements could result in fines of up to $14,000.
While this is clearly a political ploy on the part of the Joe Biden and his team of power-hungry Washington insiders to shift the focus from their disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the American public knows better: After nearly a year and a half's worth of arbitrary, ever-changing, and unconstitutional government mandates in response to the COVID outbreak, it was always a given that the Biden Administration would ramp things up even further when it behooved them.
And now, it would seem that time has officially come.
"This is not about freedom or personal choice," Biden uttered in his remarks, confirming his administration's blatant dismissal of all Americans' right(s) to accept or decline the experimental Covid-19 vaccine.
This is a stunning reversal from Biden's declaration last December that "I don’t think [the vaccine] should be mandatory, I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory."
In fact, Biden even confirmed his intention to flout states' rights in the process, warning that "If these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way."
These are not the words of an "empathetic" leader; these are the words of an aspiring dictator. And, for the time being, the only way to stop Joe Biden's tyranny is through mass noncompliance.
As we've said from the beginning, science, basic logic, and common sense should dictate policy regarding COVID and the Delta variant.
But Joe Biden and the federal government have long abandoned those principles throughout this crisis, culminating into this disturbing yet inevitable flurry of intrusive vaccine mandates that use people's jobs, individual autonomy, and livelihood as leverage.
This assault on our individual rights, private businesses, and American workers cannot be tolerated, and the easiest way to combat these unlawful orders is to just say NO.
Please SIGN and SHARE this most important petition letting Joe Biden know that you will NOT comply with the unconstitutional medical demands being made by this administration, and that action should be taken to block any intrusive action against working Americans and private employers.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Biden announces vaccine requirements for private businesses, impacting tens of millions of Americans': https://www.
Becerra said his background is in “health policy.”
But specifically, that policy experience includes suing Catholic religious sisters, pregnancy resource centers, and pro-life journalists.
As Attorney General of California, Becerra enforced the state’s “Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act,” that required pregnancy resource centers to promote abortion. The pregnancy resource centers won their Supreme Court case in 2018.
He also filed criminal charges against journalist David Daleiden, who exposed the abortion industry’s role in fetal body part trafficking. The case is currently being appealed.
Becerra also lost a 2020 Supreme Court case against the Little Sisters of the Poor. California sought to force the Catholic nuns to pay for abortifacients as part of their health insurance plan.
As Paul noted, Becerra’s health policy background somehow has not led him to have an understanding of the benefits of natural immunity, which has been well-documented.
Professor Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist who teaches at Harvard University’s medical school, has said that an Israeli study about natural immunity has weakened the argument for “vaccine passports.”
It is not clear if Senator Paul’s comments about an Israeli natural immunity study referred to the August 25 paper that found that “vaccinated individuals had 27 times higher risk of symptomatic COVID infection compared to those with natural immunity from prior COVID disease,” according to Kulldorff’s summary.
The study looked at over 60,000 individuals but drew from a pool of over 2 million people, so it is possible Paul misspoke.
A June 2021 study of Cleveland Clinic employees also found that natural immunity had lasting protection.
“The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects, previously infected subjects who were vaccinated, and previously uninfected subjects who were vaccinated,” the paper said.