EXCLUSIVE — One of television’s most recognizable doctors, now a Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, believes the Biden administration has focused too heavily on a vaccine that doesn’t accomplish what was initially promised.
“Dr. Fauci has misled us,” Dr. Mehmet Oz told the Washington Examiner in an interview this week. “The biggest reason is we expected too much from the vaccines.”
Oz, a former cardiothoracic surgeon and longtime small-screen personality, noted that “vaccines are fantastic when used the right way with the right expectations.”
But he said the Biden administration has pushed boosters for people who don’t need them, arguing that the science doesn’t support the idea that young people should get a third shot, for example.
“The data definitely does not support boosting young people,” Oz said.
He cited objections from some prominent public health experts, including Food and Drug Administration adviser Dr. Paul Offit, to the recommendation that children line up for booster shots — and the Biden administration’s decision to ignore those critiques.
“It goes against a narrative that vaccines are the answer to everything,” he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends that everyone over the age of 12 receive a booster shot.
Once described by the New Yorker as “arguably the most influential physician in America,” Oz’s long history of exploring a broad range of medical topics — some occasionally only loosely based in science, according to his critics — has drawn particular scrutiny to his comments about COVID-19.
Critics have highlighted Oz’s past promotion of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug not approved for use in treating COVID-19, as an example of what they describe as pushing unfounded claims.
Oz is vying for the Republican nomination in the race to replace outgoing Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring from the Senate in the 2022 cycle after 12 years in the chamber. The seat is key to Republican plans of winning a Senate majority. Democrats currently control the 50-50 chamber by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
Oz remains locked in a fierce Republican primary battle with former hedge fund executive David McCormick. The firm McCormick recently left, Bridgewater Associates, implemented a vaccine mandate for employees with the now-candidate at the helm.
Oz said he would support legislation that prohibited most private companies from implementing vaccine mandates.
“I would block the ability of a private company to insist that employees have invasive procedures, which a vaccine is,” Oz said. “It should be up to the employee.”
“I don’t want companies passing mandates without at least acknowledging the true science around their limitations — who they’ll help and who they won’t that much, and also where there’s natural immunity,” he said.
Oz suggested that the Biden administration’s focus on vaccines and boosters, and lack of focus on tools such as therapeutics and recognizing natural immunity, has politicized much of its COVID-19 response.
President Joe Biden carried Pennsylvania by less than 2 points in 2020. However, Republicans remain mostly optimistic about their chances of holding on to Toomey’s Senate seat in November, in large part because of the enormously negative political landscape for Democrats heading into the midterm elections.
The political climate surrounding COVID-19 restrictions has evolved rapidly in recent weeks as well, offering another advantage to Republicans.
Blue-state leaders from California to New York have moved this month to roll back mask- or vaccine-related mandates amid falling case numbers and polling that suggests people are overwhelmingly frustrated with the continuation of pandemic-era rules into a third year.
