The Daily Signal - Biden's COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate 'a Travesty,' Sen. Ron Johnson Says

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

President Joe Biden has rolled out a COVID-19 vaccine mandate affecting about 80 million American workers. Biden is ordering all businesses and other organizations with 100 or more employees to make sure those employees either become vaccinated or are tested weekly for the disease. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., says he is outraged by what he views as a massive government overreach. Vaccine mandates "are freedom-robbing," Johnson says. "They're unbelievably coercive." "I've always thought that nobody should be pressured, coerced, or fear reprisal for refusing any medical treatment, including the COVID vaccine," Johnson adds. "But we've just turned our society, our laws, our ethics on their head during this pandemic. It's time for Americans to reclaim their freedom." Johnson joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss what he and congressional colleagues plan to do about Biden's largest vaccine mandate, as well as to share some stories of Americans who have been affected by side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines. We also cover these stories: The Biden administration formally announces its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for many private employers. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Dr. Anthony Fauci get into another heated exchange during a Senate committee hearing. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler calls for over $5 million in additional police department funding nearly a year after Oregon's largest city cut its police budget in response to protests and riots. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's so much I can't explain in our response to COVID, but I can tell you it's been a miserable failure. 750,000 Americans dead either from or with COVID. I mean, the trillions of dollars, the psychological harm to our society, to our loss of freedom, to children, this has not been an effective policy response. I don't know why anybody would continue to listen to the Fauci's of the world. I have no idea why they would. That was Senator Ron Johnson, Republican from Wisconsin. And this is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, November 5th. I'm Virginia Allen.

And I'm Doug Blair. President Biden has officially rolled out his vaccine mandate plan. The president has ordered all businesses with 100 employees or more to force their employees to either become vaccinated or face weekly testing. Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican senator representing Wisconsin, is outraged by what he sees as massive federal overreach. Johnson joins the show to discuss what he and his congressional colleagues are planning to do about the mandate, as well as share some stories of people who've been impacted by vaccine side effects. But before we get to Doug's conversation with Senator Johnson,

let's hit our top news stories of the day. On Thursday, the Biden administration formally announced that it would require businesses with more than 100 employees to either get their employees fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or to force them to provide a weekly negative COVID test with a set deadline of January 4th. As a deterrent to push employees to get vaccinated, businesses will not be required to pay for the weekly tests for those who choose to remain unvaccinated, forcing employees to pay for testing themselves. Additionally, while workers must be given paid time off to get vaccinated and recover from vaccine side effects, workers will not be compensated for the time it takes to get tested.

The administration is using the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, to enforce the mandate. OSHA will find companies willfully failing to comply with the mandate a maximum of $14,000 per violation, with increased penalties for multiple violations. A similar mandate for health care workers at facilities that receive federal funding from Medicare or Medicaid removes the testing option, while still requiring full vaccination by January 4th. President Biden defended.

the vaccine mandate in a Thursday statement, saying, as we've seen with businesses large and small, across all sectors of our economy, the overwhelming majority of Americans choose to get vaccinated. There have been no mass firings and worker shortages because of vaccination requirements. Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have both pledged to fight the mandate in court, while ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, Virginia Fox, said job creators should not be forced to become the vaccine and testing police for Biden. Additionally, conservative news site, The Daily Wire, has announced that it is suing the Biden administration over the mandate. Here's editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro announcing the lawsuit via Shapiro's Twitter.

We filed a lawsuit as of this morning. We are taking them to court. We'll fight this all the way to the Supreme Court, if need be. Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci had another heated exchange Thursday during a Senate Health Committee hearing. Paul has repeatedly been critical of Fauci's handling of the pandemic. The senator has accused the National Institute of Health, where Fauci works, of funding gain of function research that some believe could have led to the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of the debate between Paul and Fauci Thursday was over the first. funding of and definition of gain of function research.

Gain of function research is generally understood to be the process of making a virus more infectious for the purpose of studying it. On October 20th, the National Institutes of Health changed the definition of gain of function research on their website to make it more narrow. So what you're doing is defining away gain of function. You're simply saying it doesn't exist because you change the definition on the NIH website. This is terrible and you're completely trying to escape the idea that we should do something about trying to prevent a pandemic from leaking from a lab. The preponderance of evidence now points towards this coming from the lab.

And what you've done is change the definition on your website to try to cover your ass, basically. That's what you've done. You've changed the website to try to have a new definition that doesn't include the risky research that's going on. Until you admit that it's risky, we're not going to get anywhere. refuted Paul's claims, saying there was a long and thorough process to change the definition of gain of function research. You know, Senator, let's make it clear for the people who are listening. The current definition was done over a two to three year period by outside bodies, including

the NSAB, two conferences by the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine on December 2014, March 2016. We commissioned external risk-benefit assessment, and then on January of 2017, the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House issued the current policy. The two continued to debate over the terminology and Fauci's involvement in the research at the Wuhan Lab.

Fauci concluded his debate with Paul by saying, as usual, I have a great deal of respect for this body, the Senate, and it makes me very uncomfortable to have to say something. But he, meaning Paul, is egregiously incorrect in what he is saying. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is calling for more than $5 million in additional funding for the city's police department, nearly a year after the city defunded the police in light of mass protests. Here's Wheeler during a Wednesday press conference via KGW News. Many Portlanders no longer feel safe in their city. Business owners have closed up shop for fear of doing business in high-risk areas.

Commuters fear for their safety, whether taking public transit or going by foot. Parents are scared to let their children play outside. People are leaving for work, going to the supermarket, or grabbing drinks with friends, and not returning home. Violent crime has spiked in the City of Roses with more than 1,000 shootings and 72 homicides recorded in 2021. The previous record high was 66 homicides back in 1987. As a result of the rise in violent crime, Mayor Wheeler has proposed an increase of 300 officers, 200 regular officers, and 100 unarmed public safety specialists over the next three years, starting in the 2023 fiscal year.

Additionally, the mayor has proposed a $25,000. signing bonus for the first 50 officers or public safety specialists to sign on, as well as rehiring 25 currently retired police officers. Around 200 officers have left the force since August 2020, with many setting low morale, lack of backing from city officials, and burnout for months of violent protests and rioting as chief causes for leaving. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Senator Ron Johnson as we discussed the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandates. I'm Zach Smith And I'm John Carl O'Conaparo

And if you want to understand what's happening at the Supreme Court, be sure to check out SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast. We take a look at the cases, the personalities, and the gossip at the highest court in the land. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you find your podcasts. It's SCOTUS 101. Our guest today is Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican who is the senior senator from Wisconsin. Senator, thank you so much for joining us today. Glad to be here.

Senator, let's talk about vaccine mandates. The Biden administration announced today that it would be pursuing a federal COVID vaccine mandate through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, also known as OSHA, that requires companies with 100-plus employees to have all employees vaccinated or to have some sort of testing regime in place where they would have to prove that they had a negative test. What do you think of that mandate to start out with? I'm utterly opposed. I mean, they are pointless.

held an event on vaccine mandates and vaccine injuries on Tuesday. And one of the presenters had a very simple decision tree. The top box said, are the COVID-19 vaccines effective? If you follow a yes line down to the second box, well, then they're pointless, right? If the vaccines are effective, you know, what do you care whether somebody else is vaccinated? If you follow the no line down to the exact same box,

it's also true. I mean, if, and unfortunately, it's the no-line. that is operative right now. The science tells us that even fully vaccinated individuals can get infected. They can transmit. They can get seriously ill. They can die, unfortunately. So that's the science.

That's the reality. So what's the point of the mandate? Particularly in light of the fact when you understand how destructive they are going to be to people's lives, forcing people into gut-wrenching, life-altering decisions between a livelihood, taking care of their family, and putting a, a, experimental vaccine in their arm that we do not know the long-term safety profile. We do not. Anybody that tells you that they know these things are perfectly safe is lying to you.

Nobody knows that because we just don't, we haven't had the time. So again, they are pointless. They are freedom robbing. They are unbelievably coercive. And I've always thought that nobody should be pressured, coerced, or free reprisal for refusing any medical treatment, including the COVID vaccine. but we've just turned our society, our laws, our ethics on their head during this pandemic. It's time for Americans to reclaim their freedom.

One of the things that you've pursued now, Fox News is reporting that you, along with 41 other Republican senators, are planning to, quote, disapprove and nullify President Biden's vaccine mandate on private employees using the Congressional Review Act. To break that down for our listeners, what exactly does that mean? And will this stop the mandate from taking effect? Well, it's a tool. can use, the Congressional Review Act, where we can overturn a regulation by an executive branch, but with as lockstep as the Democrats have been in with the Biden administration, no matter how economically destructive or politically destructive, I don't have, I'm not holding my breath

that we're going to get Democrat colleagues to join us in that. So you don't believe that this will be a bipartisan effort? I can hope and pray, but I'm not holding my breath. Okay. I guess as a kind of aside, is this mandate lawful? Is this the problem that it's through OSHA or is there a bigger issue here? We don't believe so. We don't think OSHA has the authority to do this. But that's not going to stop this administration, just like when they plowed forward with their eviction moratorium. When they knew clearly the Supreme Court had ruled it unconstitutional, that was okay. It was just their political strategy. So the harm will be done well before the courts decide on the constitutionality of this mandate. One of the other things is that you and a number of other Republican senators have announced the Keeping Our COVID-19 Heroes Employed Act, which is trying to exempt essential workers from federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Why did you introduce this bill specifically?

And then what are you hoping to achieve with this bill? Well, first of all, I'm co-sponsoring just about every bill. that's pushing back against these mandates, you know, making sure that our finest among us or military members aren't to dishonorably discharged, trying with this bill to keep in place these central workers. And, you know, I've been meeting with doctors and nurses. I mean, the heroes of COVID, I mean, the people that have the courage and compassion to treat patients, you know, may have them got infected.

They have natural immunity. Some died. Most survived. And now many of them are seeing and they're treating vaccine injuries. I can attest the fact there are, there's a large group of nurses and doctors and other health care workers that will not knuckle under and get this COVID vaccine. And we will lose decades of experience in nursing and health care. It's irreplaceable. I just heard this morning of one institution, I think it was a smaller hospital.

They don't have any permanently employed nurses anymore. It's all traveling nurses. I've heard from nurses on a daily basis. they get a text, you know, quit your job, become a traveling nurse two, three, four times your salary. Now, again, these are skilled professionals, but not necessarily for the slots that they're filling. It takes decades to get the skill level in some of these specialties. And we're going to throw that all away on an unconstitutional and pointless mandate. This is insanity.

It is insane what we're doing. But, you know, President Biden, he seems willing to plow forward throw all caution in the wind. We have seen some of the consequences of vaccine mandates. And for example, in New York City, which has a citywide mandate, I believe they've had to reduce their capacity for firefighters about 20 percent and their ambulance service is about 20 percent. Do you see that extended if the federal vaccine mandate is allowed to continue? Yes, we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg here. I mean, we've had some demonstrations of what's going to happen with a pilot slowdown or air traffic control. It can cripple airline travel.

It can cripple our transportation. It can cripple our health care industry. Right now we have such a severe health care worker shortage. I've been talking to nurses in the roundtables. Some of them are claiming that people are needlessly dying in emergency rooms because we're understaffed now. Just think of what happens if we lose a percentage of, again, these nurses and doctors with decades of experience. So one of the things that you mentioned at the top is you would host. hosted an event focused on people who had vaccine-related injuries and vaccine-related illnesses.

Would you be able to tell us a little bit about what you discussed at that roundtable? Well, first of all, we just let these people tell their stories, and they're gut-wrenching, they're heartbreaking stories. And what's even more heartbreaking is they are completely being ignored. They're not being acknowledged. They're being cast aside to the individuals actually participate in the trial. I wanted to ask for Zeneca and little Maddie de Gary. She was 12 now.

She's 13. She's in a wheelchair now. She has a feeding tube. She can't eat. They're cast aside. She was part of the Pfizer trial for younger children. These are devastating their lives and our health care agencies won't acknowledge these people. So that's the first thing.

It's just the inhumanity of that. But we're also just completely ignoring this from a standpoint of public policy as well. And I've got to quote some figures here because, I hear all the time this is like fingers on a chalkboard to me when I hear that vaccine injuries are rare and mild. Well, they're rare and mild until they happen to you or your loved one. But here the stats. For seasonal flu, on average annually, this is 26 years' worth of experience.

We have 7,551 adverse events reported per year on the VAIR system, the vaccine adverse event reporting system. Far from perfect, but that's the safety signal. on average 78 deaths per year with the seasonal flu vaccine for COVID in 10 months 10 months 837,000 that's 110 times the rate of adverse events reported in terms of deaths 17,619 that's versus 78 for flu vaccine 17,619 that's 225 times more deaths report in the veyor system associated with the COVID vaccine Now, the two criticisms of Vayers is it does not prove causality. I understand that.

But it also dramatically understates the number of adverse events. But in terms of causality, over 5,500 of those deaths occurred on day zero, one, or two following vaccination. It's certainly something we should be concerned about. It's certainly something we should investigate. It's certainly something we should acknowledge, but we're not. And you have to ask yourself the question, why? As long as I'm quoting stats, let's take a look at what the CDC and the FDA have denigrated and what they sabotaged, early treatment. And by the way, there's literally a cornucopia of drugs for therapy that I'm talking to health care.

They're using a full, you know, corticosteroids, Budescidicine, but also hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Ivermectin, a Nobel Prize-winning drugs, billions of doses in ministered safely. This is how safely. So over almost 26 years, on average, 15 deaths per year associated with Ivermectin, 15, with hydroxychloroquine, 64 on average. Over 26 years. Again, 10 months of the COVID vaccine, 17,619. By the way, remdesivir, which they just kind of rushed authorization for emergency use. 1,499 in the little bit more than a year that remdesivir is out there.

So what is going on here? Why have we taken away? Why are we taking away their doctors who are practicing medicine? Their off-labeled prescription rights. Why are we threatening their medical licenses if they have the courage and compassion to just give these things a shot? Why are we taking away Americans' freedom to try these things? It's very difficult to get either Ivermectin and hydroxychlorloroquine. You check yourself in the vast majority of hospitals, there's no way you can get these drugs.

You get put on a ventilator in far too many cases. they just watch you die. I mean, this is a travesty what's happening in our health care system as a result of this pandemic. The pandemic has exposed so many problems in our health care system, the corruption of the health care agencies,

the captured by the big pharmaceutical companies. And I've always been a defender of Big Pharma. Am I the only one that wants a new life-saving drug? Right. But we have so tilted the playing field in favor of the big pharma companies who can afford the random control trials And that's what CDC relies on.

They don't look at observational studies. They don't allow doctors to practice medicine, and the hospitals won't because they're not going to do anything different than what the CDC allows them to do. Because they don't get the grant money then. They open themselves up to potential liability. So we now practice protocols dictated by the CDC, and independent doctors are having a pretty hard time practicing medicine

and using their off-labeled prescription rights and patients. We're just caught in between, and we've lost our freedom. I want to briefly cover something that we were talking about before the show, actually. During this event, the stories of some of these people who had received these vaccines and had adverse effects to them were heartbreaking and very difficult to listen to. But we were talking about one in particular at the beginning of the show. Would you be able to kind of go in depth on some of these stories that you heard during this event and sort of what it made you feel?

Ernest, a single dad, his son was his best friend. They never were apart. I mean, just having him convey how much they loved each other, he lost a 16-year-old son, died from the vaccine. Bree, Dresen, a young mom, she was part of the Astroshenico trial. She became paralyzed from the waist down, lost control of her bladder.

She said lost her dignity. She can walk now, but she still has these inner tremors and inner vibrations. She's maybe 60% recovered. Maddie Degeri, you know, 12-year-old, now 13-year-old young girl who is now confined to wheelchair, can eat. She needs a feeding tube. She was part of the Pfizer trial. Again, they are all being cast aside. I mean, Doug told his story.

Their livelihood is gone. Dr. Joe Walskog, orthopedic surgery, can no longer perform surgery. His career is an orthopedic surgeon is over. He writes to the CDC, contacts him. They just, well, it wasn't serious enough. You're never hospitalized. They're just blowing him off. He is shocked by the lack of acknowledgement, the lack of our health agencies paying attention,

taking these people seriously. And, of course, the fact that they are not being transparent with the American public. I mean, they continue to this day say, oh, these things are perfectly safe, perfectly effective. They're not. I'm sorry to report they're not. We have to look to England for data.

And here's the data on effectiveness of vaccines right now. For the last seven-half months out of the U.K., this is their public data, 80% of their COVID case has been Delta variant of the people who have died, 63% have been fully vaccinated. In the last four weeks in the UK, 78% of those who have died with the Delta variant

have been fully vaxed. So unlike President Biden who promised us, if you get this vaccine, you're not going to get seriously ill, you're not going to be hospitalized, you're not going to die, you're not going to catch COVID. That's an outright lie that he has never corrected.

This is not a pandemic on the unvaxed. What it is, it's a pandemic that we, have refused to treat early. As you heard Dr. McCarrie today in this, nobody should be dying of COVID. Right. I don't know that I necessarily agree with that. I mean, people with comorbidities,

I mean, this is a serious disease. I don't downplay it at all. But the fact that we haven't robustly explored early treatment, that we haven't used this cornucopia of repurpose cheap, generic drugs is a travesty. Now, listen, I hope Merck's new drug, Monopiero, I hope it works. But it's $700 of treatment.

And it's like 20 months. too late. One of the questions that I'm asking myself, as I'm hearing these stories, because there are clearly side effects related to these vaccines that we don't quite understand yet, not to say that the vaccine itself is an issue, but like we need to discuss these problems. Why do you think we're not able to discuss these side effects? The COVID gods have decided on a singular approach to ending this pandemic as a vaccine. They will never admit they were wrong, not the COVID gods, not the mainstream media, not the social media, because if they admit they were wrong, for example, on early treatment, if it's ever proven, I mean, the way they

have to prove it. I mean, I think it's pretty well proven because I talk to the doctors. I talked to the patients that have used and recovered from COVID with Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. But if they ever admit or are proven wrong, they're going to have to admit the tens of not hundreds of thousands of people needlessly died. So they just happen to have the power to make sure they're never proven wrong. So right now, I think they are recognizing that they've been wrong in early treatment,

which is why they're all rushing to approve the Molin and Peruvier. Now, again, I hope it works. I'd rather pay $700 to save a life, but I hope that they will still allow doctors and people that can't afford it. For example, around the world, people can't afford $700, but they can afford it Ivermectin, by the way, in those countries where have used it, there's some pretty strong anecdotal evidence that it works, but we've ignored all of that. Again, there's so much I can't explain in our response to COVID, but I can tell you it's been a miserable failure.

750,000 Americans dead either from or with COVID. I mean, the trillions of dollars, the psychological harm to our society, to our loss of freedom, to children, this has not been the effective, policy response. I don't know why anybody would continue to listen to the Fauci's of the world. I have no idea why they would. One of the things that kind of fascinates me as well about the response to COVID in America is we treat natural immunity versus vaccinated immunity very differently than the rest of the world does. It seems like a lot of places around the world, except that natural immunity from a prior COVID infection and recovery is, if not the same, on the same level as a vaccine. Why do you think that America is different than other countries where we don't treat natural immunity the same.

Again, the COVID gods want a vaccine in every arm. They'll throw caution in the wind. They have denied all kinds of realities. And natural immunity is one of them. By the way, again, I'm not a doctor and not a medical researcher, but I talk to enough of them who explain these things to me. It makes perfect sense. I mean, generally, natural immunity is quite strong.

It's robust. It's not universally. So, but why would we automatically assume that it's not worth anything? Now, Dr. McCarrie was talking about an Israeli study showed, you know, once a It's adjusted for comorbidities 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity. And again, the reason it makes sense is your natural immunity recognizes the entire virus, all the antigens. The vaccine only recognizes the spike protein, protects you against that. If the spike protein changes, it's not very effective.

Is that what's happening with the delta? The analogy I've heard is your natural immunity recognizes your entire face. Right. The vaccine, only your nose. So if you get a nose job, vaccine's not going to recognize you, but your natural immunity will. That's an interesting analogy. I don't think I've ever heard that before. Another thing that I've been noticing as we go on through this sort of post-pandemic or sort of like ending pandemic mentality, is there is a stark difference in how unvaccinated people or, as I think you mentioned in the event, non-immune people versus immune people are being treated in society at large.

How do you view that difference in treatment now? Well, again, a travesty. When I heard that a kidney transplant recipient and her donor were denied the transplant, it wasn't like they were unhealthy. It wasn't like they were infected with COVID. The surgeons, the hospital simply would not perform the surgery. What happened to the Hippocratic oath? No, this is a travesty.

When I've heard of the families whose loved one get so sick, they have to check them into a hospital. and sometimes they'll bring some of these repurposed drugs to the hospital. We won't. They'll take them to court. I've heard stories where the hospital has been taken to court. They administer ivermectin. Somebody's gotten off the ventilator. They stop issuing ivermectin to get sick, get put back on the ventilator.

The loss of freedom has been, to me, has just been eye-opening in terms of what hospitals are doing and won't do and how they will just refuse family involvement or, you know, somebody's own health directive. They just, it's like, you're in our hospital. You're going to do the things. You're going to treat this illness the way we're going to treat it. We don't need any of your advice and we're not going to take any of your directives. This has been a travesty.

Well, Senator, as we begin to wrap up here, I want to kind of get some insight here. What is the plan in, from the legislative perspective, to either fight against this vaccine mandate or to pull America out of this pandemic. What is the plan? Well, the way I'm approaching is with information because our health care agencies have not been honest. They have not been transparent. So I'm trying to provide the transparent information. But you've seen what happens to me. I hold this event on Tuesday. And I've got group doctors in Wisconsin saying that I'm spreading conspiracy theories. I'm letting people tell their true stories. We have medical experts talking to these issues. But so those of us who are providing that information are getting attacked, we're being

censored. Dr. Pierre-Corey, 8 million views of his testimony of Ivermectin in December 2020, that got pulled from YouTube, censored. You know, I do radio interviews. The radio talk show host gets censored, gets kicked off YouTube for a week or two, you know, suspension because he talked to me. So this level of cancel culture, I don't know how many lives it's cost, but it's a lot of it. is very destructive. So, you know, what we're trying to do is just provide information. We'll continue to introduce bills, hopefully put public pressure, maybe get some Democrats on board, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. They're in lockstep with this administration. Again, no matter how economically or politically destructive it is, so I'm not holding my breath

that we're going to be able to do anything legislatively in the courts have been really quite supportive of mandates in the private sector. I understand that. Your private employer, you can set the terms and conditions of your employer. employment. But in terms of ruling on the honest constitutionality of OSHA's rule, that'll take months, maybe years to be fully decided. It'll be too late. This will be over by then. Well, that was Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican who serves as the senior senator from Wisconsin. Senator, I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and have five-star rating on Apple Podcasts.

And please take a moment to encourage others to subscribe. Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you all on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Blewey and Virginia Allen. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.