Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Scott's bill. I want to make a few different points. First of all, I don't believe this administration or people who support the mandates are really thinking the process through as to how devastating these mandates are going to be on our economy.

Well before the President even announced his unlawful regulatory initiative, I was hearing from truckdrivers; I was hearing from nurses and doctors who have already had COVID, who had natural immunity, who are looking at, for example, the reports, are looking at some of the data and science saying that natural immunity is 13 to 27 times more effective than the vaccine, and they have chosen not to get it.

President Biden promised the American public he wouldn't mandate this. He said: ``I don't think it should be mandatory. I wouldn't demand it to be mandatory.''

His Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, said it is not the Federal Government's role.

I agree. The President also said: ``This is not about freedom or personal choice.''

No, this is exactly about freedom and personal choice.

I have written so many oversight letters to the healthcare Agencies. I completely agree with Senator Scott. I was a big supporter of Operation Warp Speed. I have gotten every vaccine until this one because I have had COVID, but the Federal Agencies have not been transparent. They have not given the American public information that we need to make that informed choice.

We need to recognize people's health autonomy. This is their body. They should be able to make these choices.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the information we are not getting from our healthcare Agencies that people who are choosing not to get vaccinated are looking at. And it is not disinformation. This is real information. It is just being withheld from the public by our healthcare Agencies, by the media, and the social media.

The first thing I want to show is a chart that I put together. Again, this is real data. This comes from the CDC in terms of the number of new cases per day, as well as the number of deaths per day. The deaths are down here in a very thin red line. But you can see by this chart that in terms of the surge of the initial Alpha variant of COVID, it pretty well peaked late December, early January.

The vaccines got the emergency use authorization about mid-December. The orange line shows the percent of Americans vaccinated, fully vaccinated. You can see the initial surge, the initial pandemic, was winding down before the vaccines even could take effect.

Now, again, we all hoped and prayed that the vaccine would be 100 percent effective and 100 percent safe. But when you look at this chart, as the pandemic is winding down, the percent of fully vaccinated individuals are going up, you would think--again, you would think what you would see is just a complete winding down of the pandemic. But that is not what we have seen.

We have seen this new surge, this new surge of a variant called Delta. So what are we to make of this? Again, I am not a doctor; I am not a medical researcher--but I look at this, and I am going, well, it certainly doesn't look like the vaccine has been particularly effective against the Delta variant.

But let's look at some data, the type of data that we are not getting from our healthcare Agencies. So we have to look, unfortunately, to England and to Israel that are more transparent. I don't expect anybody to be able to read the figures here. I will give you the highlights, but I am showing that this is from Public Health England. This is one of their Federal healthcare Agencies. This is from their technical briefing No. 23, dated September 17, 2021. It covers cases for about 7\1/2\ months, from the beginning of February to February 12. What the data shows is that during that 7\1/2\-month period in England, there are about 750,000 new COVID cases. A little under 600,000 of those were the Delta variant, about 80 percent. The number of deaths associated with those 600,000 Delta cases was 2,542, which gives us a case fatality ratio of about 0.4.

Now, again, case fatality is higher than infection fatality because these are actually registered cases, and there are all kinds of infections that never get registered. So to put this in context, an infection fatality rate for a bad flu season is slightly under 0.2, half of this. Again, put things in perspective.

Now, President Biden--and this has been parroted by media, news media--said that what we are currently experiencing is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. They don't give us, really, any data to back that up; they just proclaim, pronounce, that 99 percent of people with COVID now are unvaccinated, but they don't give us the data.

We have data from England. And here is the data. So of the 600,000 cases in England, 43 percent were with the unvaxxed; 27 percent were with the fully vaxxed; another 30 percent were partially vaxxed or just undetermined. But I think what is interesting--here is another quote from President Biden--President Biden said: If you are vaccinated, you are not going to be hospitalized; you are not going to an ICU unit; you are not going to die; you are not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.

Well, maybe that is true in the United States. I kind of doubt it because in England, of the 600,000 new cases of Delta, of the over 2,500 deaths--63 percent of those deaths--1,613 people were fully vaccinated. Twenty-eight percent were with the unvaxxed.

This is information the American people probably never heard. It is information, by conveying it, I will get attacked. I will be vilified. I will be censored. I will be suppressed. It is one of the reasons I come to the floor of the Senate to reveal this information that the American people need to know.

Let me close with something else that certainly nurses know, nurses who were our heroes. They had the courage and compassion to treat COVID patients. Many got infected; some tragically died; most survived. Now, many of those nurses are treating the vaccine injured.

Let me just quick quote a couple of figures from the CDC's own safety early surveillance system--the VAERS report, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Worldwide, from a couple of weeks ago--these numbers are pretty fresh--there have been over 15,000 deaths reported on VAERS. Now, I realize VAERS does not prove causation. But of those 15,000 deaths, over 5,000 of those deaths have occurred on days 0, 1, or 2 following vaccination.

Now, again, it doesn't prove causation, but if I were working at the CDC, I would be looking at that very closely and analyzing those cases. The final number, total adverse events, on the VAERS system in 10 months, since the COVID vaccines have been under emergency use authorization, over 725,000 adverse events. So, again, I was hoping and praying this vaccine was 100 percent effective, 100 percent safe, but that does not appear to be the case.

And I believe this administration, I believe our healthcare Agencies need to be honest and transparent with the public. They have not been. The American people have the right to choose. It should not be mandated. We should respect their personal choice. We should respect their freedom.

And I will just close on--I will be bringing more information as we discuss other ways to push back on these mandates over the next few days, so stay tuned.

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