Lee Habeeb, the host of Our American Stories, vice president of content for the Salem Radio Network, and Newsweek columnist, said on Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow that Dr. Anthony Fauci uses shame and unwarranted conviction in attempting to convince Americans to accept coronavirus vaccinations.
Habeeb described the use of “shame and certainty” as reminiscent of religious exploitations.
“[Using] shame and certainty are what angry clerics do,” he said. “This is the role of mullahs, or the church when it used to shame people into submission and just make their lives miserable.”
He added, “I would have a heart attack if Fauci were to come on and say the latest study about masks says that surgical masks reduce death rates 11 percent — by the way, give the number: 11 percent, right? — and the cloth masks we’re wearing, all bets are off, that’s really not working.”
“I’d have a heart attack if [Fauci] were honest,” he continued. “I’d have a heart attack if he qualified things, if he showed humility. It’s the certainty with which they speak and the moral judgment that puts — particularly, and I know people have written about this — puts religious people off.”
Habeeb likened the demands for compliance with government decrees, ostensibly issues to combat coronavirus transmission, with religious devotion.
He remarked, “This becomes a new competitive religion.”
Marlow replied, “[Fauci] has become a religious cleric.”
Skepticism of the accuracy of government claims are sensible, Habeeb determined.
“Interestingly enough, white and black church folk — especially white and rural church folk — are highly suspicious,” he stated. “No one’s talking about this thread, right? [They’re] not suspicious because those folks are Luddites. but the way Anthony Fauci is talking is almost like he’s on a mountaintop like Moses.”
Habeeb reflected on a recent column of his in which he addressed Robyn Tannehill, mayor of Oxford, Mississippi, for “shaming” unvaccinated residents.
He remarked, “I let the [Mayor Robyn Tannehill] know that shaming us isn’t the best way to get people who don’t agree to join the cause, and in fact, it only gets them to harden the cause. I then asked her, ‘Would you have shamed AIDS patients because of their bad choices if you were mayor of New York in the 80s for their sexual choices or their choices with needles? Of course not.”
He continued, “You certainly don’t fat-shame the people of Mississippi, and obesity — we now know — is a driving factor for the comorbidities, from diabetes [to] heart disease. It’s also $3.5 billion spent every year just in the state of Mississippi to treat type 2 diabetes There shouldn’t be [and fat-shaming]. It’s not how you’re going to get more people to take the vaccine.”
Habeeb called for contextual considerations to be made by Americans in terms of the coronavirus vaccines.
“I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but we’re situational in our ethics [and] in our application of any medical treatment,” he held. “We go to talk to our doctor, the doctor gives us his opinion, and then that doctor always says, ‘Well, talk to another doctor for a second opinion,’ and then you get a third opinion, and then maybe talk to your priest or your rabbi, and you make the decisions.”
Habeeb concluded by noting that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, during the 2020 presidential campaign season, undermined confidence in Operation Warp Speed and the resulting coronavirus vaccines.
“A lot of people are rightfully skeptical,” Habeeb observed. “You have to say to people, ‘For those of you who didn’t like Trump’ — and that includes Biden and Kamala Harris — ‘I don’t trust this drug. It’s gone through the FDA process too fast. It’s politics driving science,’ right? That was the narrative. So when Biden’s announcing … the third dose and a couple of FDA guys leave, well then why isn’t that rational that they’re suspicious?”
He went on, “It’s not like the American people have a high level of trust for pharma. They spend $250 million a year lobbying, and there’s also a non-profit that the CDC have given $80 million to in the past five years. By the way, it doesn’t mean pharma didn’t make a good drug. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its place. It just says can we talk? Can we have things like contradictions and live with them? Can we live with paradox? That we have a little irony? Can we deal with doubt and skepticism? Of course we do. We do it every day.”
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