Dr Hotez believes the police and military must be used to counter “anti-vaccine aggression”
Dr Peter Hotez has suggested that the police and military should be used to counter “anti-vaccine aggression” in the US and around the world, and blamed such “aggression” for causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US during the pandemic.
Dr Hotez, a high-profile advocate of the COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, was being interviewed earlier this month at the International Symposium of Pediatric Updates in Cartagena, Colombia, when he made the comments.
“What I’ve said to the Biden administration is, the health sector can’t solve this on its own. We’re going to have to bring in Homeland Security, the Commerce Department, Justice Department to help us understand how to do this.
“I met with Dr. Tedros [director general of the WHO] last month… to say, I don’t know that the World Health Organization can solve this on our own. We need the other United Nations agencies. NATO. This is a security problem because it’s no longer a theoretical construct or some arcane academic exercise. Two hundred thousand Americans died because of anti-vaccine aggression, anti-science aggression.
“And so, this is now a lethal force… and now I feel as a pediatric vaccine scientist… it’s important, just as important for me to make new vaccines, to save lives. The other side of saving lives is countering this anti-vaccine aggression.”
Dr Hotez described the “anti-vaccine movement” as being “political motivated” and “organized,” “deliberate” and “well-funded.”
A full video of the interview was available until Wednesday, when it was removed from YouTube. The Defender obtained the full video and provided a transcript on its website.
Hotez is currently dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University College of Medicine. He is also director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, which sponsored the event in Colombia.
Dr Hotez was directly involved in the development of the Corbevax COVID-19 vaccine, which was administered in India, and has received tens of millions of dollars in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He holds patents for a variety of different vaccines.
In addition to his medical research, Dr Hotez has become a highly visible campaigner in the fight against “vaccine misinformation.” A puff-piece in The Hill from March noted that Dr Hotez finds “pushing back on the anti-vaccine movement is just as important as developing vaccines.”
