During an interview on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” FNC’s Chris Wallace challenged Gov. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) for opposing President Joe Biden’s mandate for the COVID-19 vaccine but not for other diseases.
Ricketts said, “We have been encouraging people to get vaccinated. We’ve been providing information encouraging people to reach out to their neighbors because vaccines work and they will help people. But it should be a personal health care choice. This is not something that the government should mandate, and somebody shouldn’t have to make the choice between keeping their job and getting a job in the arm. It’s just wrong. I’ve talked to people, a number of people who have told me if they made me take the vaccine, I’m just going to be fired, I’m not going to do it.”
Wallace said, “You say it’s a personal choice. In fact, to attend school in your state of Nebraska, children must be vaccinated against a number of diseases. Let me put them up on the screen. They must be vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella, hepatitis B, and chicken pox. Why are those mandates that parents and your state must comply with and do comply with routinely — why is it that they are not so objectionable and such a violation of personal freedom but Biden’s vaccine mandates are?”
Ricketts said, “Well, for all those that you just listed, this a long history that parents have had the opportunity to see how those things have been implemented. And there’s still a lot of people out there who don’t know what to trust. In fact, this is really an outcome of what the CDC has done because they flip-flopped on so many issues, whether it’s masks or whether you have to mask if you’ve been vaccinated and so forth. There’s just a lot of people out there who don’t know who to trust right now. And so, by having the government force it on you, you’re not building the trust where we have the heart trust with those other vaccines. This is a process that’s going to take time to bring people along, and that’s why it should be a personal choice and not something mandated by the government buried .”
Wallace said, “I’m old enough that I remember when the polio vaccine first came out. A lot of us and certainly our parents viewed it as a blessing and immediately — I lived in New York state at that time, the state-mandated that we all get the polio vaccine. So you know we are in the middle of a pandemic. There is a new vaccine that Donald Trump was largely responsible for. It’s been approved, full approval by the FDA. Again, if polio vaccine is okay for parents and they have to comply with it, to send their kids to school, why not for a lot of people, not just kids, the vaccine for this disease?”
Ricketts said, “I think this is very different from polio that has very devastating effects.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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