Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul chastised the dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing for failing to speak out against the draconian coronavirus vaccine mandates that have contributed to a crippling nationwide nursing shortage.
Sarah Szanton, a registered nurse with a Ph.D. and a nursing school professor of “Health Equity and Social Justice,” testified Thursday during the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on “Examining Health Care Workforce Shortages.”
Paul, a physician, expressed his displeasure with the school’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.
“Dr. Szanton, are you pro-choice in regards to patients making individualized medical choices?” he asked.
“Broadly, thank you, yes,” Szanton replied.
“Are you aware that your university doesn’t allow choice with regard to vaccination, that you require all of your students to have three vaccines in order to be students?” Paul asked.
“Yes,” she said.
He retorted: “So it’s sort of choice, but not so much when regarding vaccination.”
In Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, they don't have university mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Then why do American universities, like Johns Hopkins, stick their heads in the sand and require three vaccines? pic.twitter.com/tQFcKQNowH
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) February 16, 2023
The three-term senator then pressed Szanton on the rising number of cases of myocarditis, a heart inflammation that has occurred with alarming frequency among vaccinated young men.
“Are you aware of the increased risk of myocarditis with the COVID vaccine, particularly with successive COVID vaccinations in males between the ages of 16 and 24?” Paul asked.
Szanton refused to answer and replied, “I’m prepared to talk about the nursing crisis, and that we have vaccine requirements across the board for –“
Paul stepped in and inquired about her school’s ongoing vaccine mandate.
The senator chastised Szanton for stating that she does not make vaccine policy for Johns Hopkins.
“Here’s the problem, if you exclude everybody from being a nurse who believes in basic immunology, you’re gonna include a lot of smart people — people who believe that you can get immunity from both vaccination as well as infection — and if you say, ‘Well, we’re just not gonna take the people who believe in that old-fashioned infection thing providing immunity, we’re only gonna take the people who do as they’re told,’” he said.
Szanton was grilled by Paul about the absurdity of one-size-fits-all solutions, claiming that different patients, particularly those of different ages, require different treatments.
“I mean, do you think individuals should be treated the same when they come to the emergency room?” he asked.
“You get an 18-year-old with chest pain and a 68-year-old obese diabetic with chest pain. You think they get treated the same in the emergency room? There are differences based on age.”
“We used to always make differences, even on the flu vaccine,” the senator continued. We recommended it to people who were in danger. We’ve been doing this for a long time.”
Paul questioned the wisdom of ignoring the COVID vaccine mandates’ differences.
“We’re now doing it with an experimental vaccine,” he said.
I asked, "Can you tell me if anyone on the vaccine approval committees ever received money from the people who make vaccines?"
Fauci : "People who receive royalties are not required to divulge them." pic.twitter.com/a0YIm2jfvZ
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) June 16, 2022
Szanton deflected when Paul asked if she believes in natural immunity.
The senator’s reaction was one of disbelief. “You’re a leader at Johns Hopkins, and your opinion could be heard,” he said.
Paul cited Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and public policy researcher who has repeatedly criticized the medical community’s refusal to prioritize natural immunity over vaccines in the fight against COVID-19.
“Dr. Marty Makary is there, and Dr. Marty Makary has been very active in this,” the senator said.
“He has looked at the incidence of myocarditis, and he says it’s 28 times more likely to get myocarditis from the vaccine than from COVID for a particular cohort of young men.”
Szanton, as dean of a university, has an obligation, according to Paul, to investigate and question the vaccine mandate in light of disturbing reports of premature deaths in otherwise healthy young people.
Many European universities, according to the senator, do not have vaccine mandates, but Johns Hopkins does.
“In Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, they don’t have university mandates on this,” he said. “Some countries don’t recommend it for children at all.
“There really is a debate and a discussion. You can have an opposite debate that if you believe in choice, when something has a debate and there’s arguments on both sides, you’d give people a choice.”
The doctor mentioned a large study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that discovered unvaccinated people who had been infected with the coronavirus at some point were far less likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated people.
“When you mandate this, you can’t make any arguments about protecting other people, it’s only about you at this point,” Paul said, referring to the myth that the vaccine prevents viral transmission.
The senator emphasized that he was not saying that people should not be vaccinated, but that we should be allowed — and encouraged — to question the safety and efficacy of vaccine mandates, whether ordered by the government or institutions.
