Dr. Peter Hotez Says ‘Far-Right Anti-Vaccine Aggression’ Has Killed 200,000 Americans
Dr. Peter Hotez, a frequent guest on left-leaning cable news, claimed that “far right anti-vaccine aggression” has killed 200,000 Americans since last summer on Tuesday.
Hotez, a professor and Dean of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, joined Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC to discuss Tuesday’s Senate hearing in which Dr. Anthony Fauci was involved in two contentious exchanges with Republican senators.
After being asked by Mitchell about new isolation guiltiness from the CDC and also Fauci’s encounters during the hearing, Hotez slammed the Conservative Political Action Conference and what he said was deadly and extreme rhetoric about vaccines.
Hotez said:
Well, there is some credibility gap from the CDC but I think it’s important not to conflate that with the attacks on prominent U.S. scientists. Let’s break it down into components. Component one is the fact that the far-right anti-vaccine aggression has caused 200,000 Americans since June, last June to lose their lives because they were defiant of vaccines, so there is — and this is coming right out of the CPAC conference, vaccines are political instruments of control. Or, first they’ll vaccinate you, then they’ll take your guns and Bibles away. [Those are] quotes from members of the United States Congress.
So the attack on Tony, Dr. Fauci today, it’s not all just Tony. It’s myself and a few other key U.S. scientists is all part of that. It’s—and it’s not random. It’s intentional. It’s meant to discredit science and to discredit scientists and sow doubt in the American people for political gain. So, Dr. Fauci was absolutely right in the way he responded.
Hotez did not explain how he arrived at the conclusion that 200,000 Americans have died specifically from “far-right anti vaccine aggression.”
Later during the interview, Mitchell asked Hotez about an exchange Fauci had with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in which the latter accused the former of being at least partially to blame for 800,000 American Covid-19 deaths.
“I think we can all agree, you now, that it’s the anti-vaxxers, the politicization, what started under Donald Trump., said Hotez. “All of that.”
Asked by Mitchell how to heal a partisan divide with relation to vaccines, Hotez answered by connecting conservatism to vaccine hesitancy, which the doctor referred to as “defiance.”
“You can show this in the red states, and you can make these very strong associations, statistically, between percentage of conservatism and those who voted for Donald Trump, and those who are defiant of vaccinations,” he said.
“Anti-science is now a leading killer of young and middle-age adults in the United States of America,” Hotez concluded.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
