Warning: Ron Johnson May Be Hazardous to Your Health
“Acting on the wrong information can kill. In the first 3 months of 2020, nearly 6,000 people around the globe were hospitalized because of coronavirus misinformation… [and] at least 800 people may have died due to misinformation related to COVID-19.” World Health Organization, April 17, 2021.
Senator Ron Johnson, on Vicki McKenna’s April 22 podcast, defiantly and belligerently posed two questions to push back against the calls for universal COVID vaccination: “[W]hat do you care if your neighbor has one or not?”, and, “So why is this big push to make sure everybody gets a vaccine?”
Dr. Anthony Fauci wasted no time in denouncing Johnson’s death-risk-promoting campaign, reminding him: “[W]e are dealing with an emergency. … How can anyone say that 567,000 dead Americans is not an emergency?”
Johnson has been spreading dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus for more than a year. On April 1, 2020, he wrote a Real Clear Politics opinion piece, arguing, falsely, that “COVID-19 is transmitted primarily from the hands to the face. … Feel free to use a face mask, primarily to train yourself NOT TO TOUCH YOUR FACE.” [Capital letters per original]
Johnson’s zero-evidence claim about hand-to-face coronavirus transmission was the height of recklessness. He was dead wrong.
Fifty-one days after Johnson’s behavior-directing editorial, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) summarized actual data, and concluded exactly the opposite of Johnson’s faux medical opinion: it is respiratory transmission, not hand-to-face contact, that is the primary transmission route of the killer virus.
Last year, Johnson took to USA Today on March 29 to downplay the impact of COVID-19 illness and death: “Every premature death is a tragedy, but death is an unavoidable part of life”, and concluded by arguing that business shut-downs should therefore be kept to a minimum.
Johnson has promoted for COVID-related issues the use of two prescription drugs, despite having no background in biology or medical science.
Johnson’s preference for unscientific notions, ones damaging to public health, is by no means confined to the current pandemic.
The Human-caused climate crisis? No problem, says Johnson : “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change. […] “It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time.
Johnson has voted to repeal the data-driven Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finding that heat-trapping gasses are endangering human health, and to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
The World Health Organization has estimated that climate change is responsible for more than 150,000 deaths annually. Johnson has not apologized for his votes.
Heading into his 2016 reelection campaign, Johnson made an unconditional promise to the voters: if re-elected to the Senate, he would step down at the end of the 2017-2022 term. He is now looking for wiggle room to betray his commitment. It’s now up to the voters of Wisconsin, and anguished citizens around the country, to hold him to his word.