Tipsheet

CNN Medical Analyst: It's Easier to Get People Vaccinated When They Don't Have Their Freedoms

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  April 02, 2021 4:30 PM

CNN medial analyst Dr. Leana Wen, the former president of Planned Parenthood, made very revealing comments about how it's easier to compel people to get the Covid-19 vaccine when they don't have their freedoms.

While the comments were made to CNN’s Chris Cuomo last month, the clip went viral this week.

She expressed her concern that herd immunity wouldn’t be reached due to some Americans’ hesitancy to get the vaccine—labeling them anti-vaxxers.

 “I know that’s hard for a lot of people to believe, who desperately want the vaccine right now. And they’re thinking, ‘Oh, well, it’s just a small percentage of people who are actually anti-vaxxers.’ And that’s true,” Wen said. 

“There is the anti-science, anti-vaxxer contingent,” she continued. “But I think that there are many more people, millions of people who, for whatever reason, have concerns about the vaccine, who just don’t know what’s in it for them. And we need to make it clear to them that the vaccine is the ticket back to pre-pandemic life. And the window to do that is really narrowing. I mean, you were mentioning, Chris, about how all these states are reopening. They are reopening at 100 percent.”

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In other words, you must get the vaccine to get your freedom back. And the problem in her mind is that if states reopen without compelling everyone to get vaccinated, there won’t be any motivation for them to do so afterwards.  

“And we have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status,” Wen continued. “Because otherwise, if everything is reopened, then what’s the carrot going to be? How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine? So that’s why I think the CDC and the Biden administration needs to come out a lot bolder and say, ‘If you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things. Here are all these freedoms that you have,’ because otherwise, people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway. And I fear a situation of coming into the fall, where we never reach herd immunity, and then we get hit by the next surge of COVID-19, in the fall, something that we could have prevented, if we just got people vaccinated now.”