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- GOP Senator Ron Johson has said he will support a vaccination mandate only for an “incredibly deadly” disease, but not for COVID-19.
- COVID-19 has killed more than 613,000 people in the United States and more than 4.2 million worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
- Johnson also attacked the CDC for changing its masking guidelines.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, said he would support a vaccine mandate for an “incredibly deadly disease”, but said he would not support such a mandate for COVID-19.
“No,” Johnson said during an appearance Friday night on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” when asked if he would ever support some sort of vaccine mandate. “Not unless there is some incredibly deadly disease. I mean much higher infection death rates than we have with COVID.”
“We don’t know the final infection death rate, but at the moment it looks like it won’t be more than double a bad flu season,” he added.
Scientists believe the death rate from COVID-19 is “considerably higher” than that of seasonal flu strains, according to Johns Hopkins University. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were approximately 34,000 deaths in the United States from flu-related causes during the 2018-19 flu season.
COVID-19, which emerged in late 2019, has so far killed more than 613,000 people in the United States and more than 4.2 million people around the world, according to data analyzed by Johns Hopkins University. More than 34 million cases of the disease have been diagnosed in the United States since the disease was first diagnosed in the United States early last year.
New cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the disease declined with the vaccine rollout earlier this year, but the disease faces a resurgence in the United States as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads.
—App (@Acc) July 31, 2021
While vaccinated people can contract and spread the Delta variant, experts and data suggest that vaccines prevent serious illness and death. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, earlier this month called the ongoing wave a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Over the past week, vaccination warrants have become more common as cases of illness increase. Still, Walensky said on Friday that there would be no federal vaccine mandate for Americans, Reuters reported.
Major U.S. companies, including Walmart and Disney, announced this week that they will require some of their U.S. employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Joe Biden announced this week that all federal workers must be fully immunized or undergo regular testing.
Also in Friday’s interview, Johnson lashed out at the CDC after changing its guidelines this week on wearing face masks
“The American public is losing faith in our federal health agencies – and that’s a shame,” Johnson said. “If there is one part of government, other than the Department of Defense, that you would like to trust, it would be the federal health agencies – and they have lost the trust of the American public.
“Because they don’t make sense,” he added. “They flip-flop on issues, whether it’s masks, they don’t back up their claims with science.”
The agency said this week that vaccinated people should mask themselves in areas with high COVID-19 levels, reversing its May guidelines that fully vaccinated people can remove their masks in most settings.
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