The U.S. Supreme Court dropped the hammer on the president's vaccine mandate almost two weeks ago, but the administration must have had a hard time saying goodbye. It took 12 full days, but OSHA, the government's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, finally got around to shutting down the private employer "jabs for jobs" rule it never had the grounds to write. A defeated Biden formally withdrew his "emergency temporary standard" this week -- which, as it turns out, was never an emergency, but thanks to the justices, it sure was temporary.
If only America could take back the other 365 days of bad COVID policy, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said on "Washington Watch." "We all talked at the beginning about 'follow the science.' The sad thing is... with this particular administration... it's become political science rather than real science." And, like a lot of Americans, Murphy is upset that our country is now paying for it. As part of the GOP Doctors Caucus in the House, he sent a letter to the head of NIH, Acting Director Lawrence Tabak, about the dangerous side effects of the administration's far-Left policies.
The group of almost 20 members asked for specific data from the agency on the "adverse reactions" of the COVID lockdowns. As the collection of doctors points out, the government's decision took a mental and physical toll on children (not to mention setting American students back scholastically). It held cardiac and cancer patients hostage while they waited for the care they needed during the elective surgery stoppage. Then, there were psychological effects of closing businesses and firing people based on their vaccination status. Our country witnessed a rise in domestic violence -- and, as we all saw, violence in general.
"Let's see how many years of life lost we had because of our actions of COVID," Murphy argued. "Let's look at the lockdowns. Let's look at people being kept away from families, their churches, their friends, and the depression that ensued, subsequent substitutes that ensued [like drug abuse]... I want to help restore faith in medicine to the American public," he said. "I also want real answers... In my opinion, I think we should have had a much more selective approach of helping those who are at high risk rather than just a shotgun approach to everybody."
In his mind and the rest of the caucus, we owe it to the American people to stop and think about the "short- and long-term ramifications of this administration's restrictive, repressive, and often damaging COVID-19 policies." So much of what's been done in the last two years as part of the government's virus response would fall in the category of abnormal. But unfortunately, what we're not hearing in the media is a discussion of what went right, what went wrong, and what needs to be the done as we address future pandemics.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) is doing his best to correct that, hosting a special event this past Monday called "COVID-19: A Second Opinion." Bringing together the best doctors, the discussion centered around ways the public had been misled. They covered a lot of ground -- from vaccine mandates to comorbidities of the virus -- and, not surprisingly, they got very little attention from the liberal media. "They can't afford to be proven wrong," the senator said Tuesday on "Washington Watch."
"Eight hundred eighty-nine thousand Americans have perished in COVID, and of course, we've been listening collectively to a group of public health officials -- many of [whom] don't practice medicine. Few, if any, of them have ever treated a COVID patient. And so, what I tried to do is provide the American public with [the truth] coming from doctors who have actually had the courage and compassion to treat thousands of COVID patients. They expose themselves to the virus. They've treated patients successfully using cheap, generic, widely available drugs that have been around for decades with an incredibly strong safety profile... And that's really not who the legacy media has listened to."
All the Biden administration wants to do is send people home afraid, he argued. Force them to isolate and maybe take some Tylenol. And just pray you don't get really sick. "They are the ones who suppress this [information], who have kept people from accessing early treatment... So this is a travesty that has occurred. I hope Americans start waking up."
