They ‘Put Their Life at Risk’: Sen. Paul Decries Firing of Front-Line Workers Over Vaccine Mandates

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) speaks on Capitol Hill on Sept. 24, 2020. Joshua Roberts/Pool/Getty Images

Firefighters, nurses, and other so-called front-line workers are being fired or facing termination across the country for not complying with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

That’s wrong, according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

“It’s a great disservice to fire people—nurses, doctors, firemen, policemen—who put their life at risk when there was no vaccine at all,” he told NTD’s “The Beau Show.”

Officials in New York and other locales that have imposed vaccine requirements say that vaccination mandates will help decrease community spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19. However, the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against infection drops sharply several months after receiving them.

“In terms of COVID, we are one of the safest places in America, because we have one of the highest levels of vaccination,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, told reporters on Nov. 3.

Paul disagrees, particularly because many mandates lack opt-outs for those who have had COVID-19 and recovered. That means that they have some level of protection against the CCP virus, multiple studies have shown.

“Many of them got COVID while taking care of people. The doctors and nurses caught COVID from their patients. Most of them survived, fortunately. They now have immunity and all the science—102 studies—show that you have immunity if you’ve had the disease naturally,” he told NTD.

NTD is part of the Epoch Media Group.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges natural immunity, or protection gained by recovering from COVID-19, but the agency says that even those with natural immunity should get a vaccine for extra protection.

“We do know that after nearly all infectious diseases, you have some protection from getting that infection again, but we don’t really know how long that lasts or how robust it is,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters on Nov. 3.

Critics argue that those points are largely the same for vaccines and note that many of the studies suggest that the level of protection is similar to or even superior to vaccination.

“What kind of discriminatory policies do we have in place that are excluding someone like me from the workplace when I’m 99.8 percent protected against reinfection, whereas someone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by the company’s own data that they submitted to the [Food and Drug Administration], is 67 percent protected against COVID infection?” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was suspended by the University of California–Irvine for not getting a vaccine, told The Epoch Times in October.

“Nothing’s perfect, but your immunity is as good as the vaccine,” said Paul, who’s also a doctor.

“And there’s no reason for the government to be mandating a vaccine, particularly on people who’ve already had the disease.”