Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson criticized the Biden administration’s push to vaccinate as many adults as possible, contradicting calls from fellow GOP lawmakers to get the shots.
“The science tells us that vaccines are 95% effective, so if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not?” Johnson said Thursday. “Why is this big push to make sure everybody gets a vaccine … I’m getting highly suspicious of what’s happening here.”
VACCINATION CAMPAIGN SLOWS IN PAST WEEK
Johnson shared his suspicions on Thursday with conservative Wisconsin radio host Vicki McKenna, arguing that distribution of the highly effective vaccines should be “limited” to those who are especially vulnerable to severe illness due to the coronavirus, such as seniors and people with underlying health conditions.
“Because it’s not a fully approved vaccine, I think we probably should have limited the distribution … to the vulnerable, to people that really aren’t very young,” Johnson said. “I see no reason to be pushing vaccines on people.”
He noted that the vaccines have not been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Rather, the federal regulation industry granted each vaccine, from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, an emergency use authorization, designating them safe for public use.
Government health experts have urged all adults, not just the most vulnerable, to get vaccinated when they can. The federal vaccine rollout has sped up to such an extent that every adult over 16 is now eligible for a shot, bringing the United States closer to reaching a level of societywide immunity that limits viral transmission. The majority of younger, healthier people who are less vulnerable to hospitalization and death due to COVID-19 should get vaccinated, Biden administration officials have argued, to prevent the spread of new highly infectious mutations of the virus such as those first detected in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Johnson has established himself as one of Congress’s staunch coronavirus skeptics, having suggested during the Trump administration that the threat of COVID-19 was overblown. After recovering from COVID-19 himself, Johnson opposed the use of mask mandates. He said last month that having been infected, “That probably provides me with the best immunity possible.”
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The federal vaccination campaign has successfully administered at least one shot to 52% of all U.S. adults over 18 at an average daily rate of about 3 million shots per day. Among the groups most hesitant to get the shots are Republicans and white evangelical Christians. Recent polling from Morning Consult found that 59% of Republicans have already gotten a shot or planned to get one, compared to 80% of Democrats. The rates of hesitancy were higher for Republicans than Democrats, with 27% of the former saying they did not plan to get vaccinated compared to 10% of Democrats who said the same.
To combat vaccine hesitancy in conservatives, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged fellow Republicans to get the shots as soon as possible, telling reporters late last month that there is “no good argument not to get the vaccination.”
To date, roughly 219 million shots have been administered in the U.S., enough to vaccinate more than 34% of the adult population fully.
