NYT Reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg: Vaccination ‘Not a Personal Choice,’ ‘My Right to Not Get Killed’ Comes First

Appearing Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg argued that receiving vaccines is not a personal decision during disease outbreaks, stating her “right to not to get killed” comes before those who want the freedom to choose whether or not they want to be inoculated.

A transcript is as follows:

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I’m sorry to be coarse about this, but there are hundreds of thousands of people who are dead because they did not take the vaccine. The science is playing out before our eyes.

SHERLY GAY STOLBERG: So, a couple of things about what [Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts] said. First of all, in an infectious disease outbreak, getting vaccinated is not a personal choice. It’s not. It’s something that we do for the community. And this has been long upheld with legal precedent. Second of all, the governor sort of complaining Biden’s mandate failed to note that he, in fact, gave business an out. Their employees can opt for mandatory weekly testing. Third, he talked about there’s a long history with [mandates and other vaccines]. How do you think we got that long history? We got that long history because those vaccines were mandated. Some of those vaccines themselves created push back when they were first mandated because people didn’t know what to trust. The governor said people were cautious, but in an infectious disease outbreak, your personal choice ends where my right not to get killed by an infectious disease begins.