Becerra Is Confronted by Senator Rand Paul for Mocking COVID Survivors Who Refuse Vaccine As “Flat Earthers”

During a September 21, 2021 online forum sponsored by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, Becerra characterized people who refused to be injected with COVID-19 vaccines as “flat earthers” who “choose to peddle fiction” — i.e., deniers of what the congressman portrayed as the scientifically proven superiority of the vaccines in comparison to the naturally acquired immunity present in people who had actually contracted COVID and survived it. “Flat earthers — meet delta,” Becerra said in reference to the so-called Delta variant of coronavirus.

Nine days later, during a September 30, 2021 hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Republican Senator Rand Paul, a medical doctor, asked Becerra if he was familiar with an Israeli study involving 2.5 million patients, which found that vaccinated individuals were “actually seven times more likely to get infected with COVID than the people who had gotten COVID naturally.” Becerra admitted he was not familiar with the study, prompting Paul to say:  “I think you might want to be [familiar with it] if you’re going to travel the country insulting the millions of Americans … who have had COVID, recovered, look at a study with 2.5 million people, and say, well, you know what, it looks like my immunity is as good as a vaccine or not. And in a free country, maybe ought to be able to make that decision. Instead, you’ve chosen to travel the country calling people like [those], myself included, ‘flat-earthers.’ We find that very insulting. It goes against the science.”

Paul then asked: “Are you a doctor, a medical doctor?” Becerra replied: “I’ve worked over 30 years on heath policy.” Paul retorted: “You’re not a medical doctor. Do you have a science degree?” When Becerra did not reply, thereby indicating that he possessed no such degree, Paul continued:  “And yet you travel the country, calling people ‘flat earthers’ who have had COVID, looked at studies of millions of people and made their own personal decision, that their immunity they naturally acquired is sufficient. But you presume, somehow, to tell over 100 million Americans who have survived COVID, that we have no right to determine our own medical care. You alone are on high and you’ve made these decisions. A lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly and un-American.”