Rand Paul needles fired CDC director Susan Monarez

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and recently-fired CDC director Susan Monarez exchanged “testy” words about vaccines in a Senate hearing today. That should come as little surprise. Paul has long been a vaccine skeptic, if not an outright opponent.

The day started with Monarez telling Congress that RFK Jr. tried to get the White House to fire her because she refused to “rubber-stamp” approve a schedule of HHS vaccinations. “He just wanted blanket approval,” Monarez said. “If I could not commit to blanket approval to each of the recommendations I would need to resign.”

She added, “I refused to do it because I have built a career on scientific integrity, and my worst fear was that I would then be in a position of approving something that would reduce access to lifesaving vaccines to children and others who need them.”

On the table is an HHS recommendation that people vaccinate newborns against Hepatitis B, which it has continually recommended since 1991. RFK Jr.’s advisory panel is scheduled to rescind that later this week. Paul supports the move, whereas Monarez said she would only support it if “science” backs it up. “All of us had agreed that the science evolves and we need to see the data and the evidence to ensure that we are protecting our children,” she said.

That’s when the testiness began.

“Does the Covid vaccine reduce hospitalization for children under 18?” Paul asked.

“It can,” Monarez said.

“It doesn’t… You resisted firing people who have this idea that the Covid vaccine should be at six months. That’s what this is about. You didn’t resist firing the beautiful scientists, the career people… unobjective and unbiased. You wouldn’t fire the people who are saying that we have to vaccinate our kids at six months of age. That’s who you refuse to fire.”

The sarcasm dripped thickly from Paul’s tongue as he said this. He’s never gotten satisfactory answers from the government about social-distancing recommendations, or lockdowns, or school closures, or federal vaccine mandates. Those are in the past now, but people who opposed them haven’t forgotten. If today’s exchange seems like an anti-vax head-scratcher, that’s the context.

Though this was supposed to be a hearing about RFK Jr.’s plans for HHS, and, in particular, his plans for childhood vaccine schedules, in reality it was part of a slow-moving ongoing referendum on America’s disastrous Covid policies during the Biden administration and the first Trump administration. We’ve never had a real truth and reconciliation commission on the topic, except maybe in Rand Paul’s mind, so today’s congressional hearings were really part of an ongoing concern.

The hearings did nothing but further retrench the teams. On one side you have “trust the science” people, who believe in the infallibility of the medical establishment, even though that establishment, or at least the immunology end of it, completely failed us during Covid, which is part of the reason we have an RFK, Jr.-led CDC in the first place. On the other hand, you have people who believe that shots contain slow-acting poisons that will kill us sooner or later. Ordinary people are just waiting to hear whether or not the government thinks they should vaccinate their children. Today’s exchange, between the former head of the CDC and a Senator who used to be a ophthalmologist, left no one satisfied.