Dr. Ben Carson told Newsmax Friday that the state of California should be more concerned with getting students back on the academic track than pushing COVID-19 vaccinations to attend school.
"There's no good scientific reason for [mandating vaccines for kids]," Carson said during "The Chris Salcedo Show" Friday. "There's control issues and you have to wonder very significantly why people are doing things like this when our children are falling behind.
"We have evidence now that the math scores and the reading scores have declined significantly more so than they have in decades. And we're worried about vaccinating children for something that's not likely to even affect them. It makes no sense whatsoever."
Carson, a former neurosurgeon and secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said that people like outgoing National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who recommend vaccinating children, despite scientific evidence that the odds of them being impacted by COVID "approaches zero," does not "follow" the scientific evidence.
"[Fauci is] a man of science, so I would expect him to follow science," Carson, said. "For instance, recommending that children get vaccinated doesn't make a whole lot of sense when in fact their risk of death or serious morbidity is 0.25%. That's approaching zero.
"We have no idea what the long-term risk is. Why would you treat almost 0% for unknown long-term risk? That's not following science at all. That's ideological."
He said that after the CDC made its latest vaccine recommendation, the price of the vaccines "went up tremendously."
"It doesn't make sense. It doesn't smell good, and it's not really serving the American people," he said. "We have a wonderful medical system with wonderfully trained doctors.
"I think we would be very wise to say, 'go to your doctor' who knows what your physical situation is and your unique medical situation, and work with your doctor and let's not have a bunch of bureaucrats trying to decide a one size fits all therapeutic regimen."
Carson said that Fauci and Walensky were very slow to come around to the effectiveness of natural immunity with COVID-19, a medical paradigm used for hundreds of years dealing with viruses and diseases.
"It's only been recently that they would even acknowledge the validity of natural immunity [from COVID]," he said. "We've known about that for hundreds of years, but it's like, 'Natural immunity? What's that?' But of course, if they recognized that early on, then you wouldn't be able to advocate that everybody has to be vaccinated. So, there are a lot of things here that don't smell particularly good."
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