Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said Friday she’s “very worried” that the U.S. will not be prepared to handle another pandemic like the COVID-19 outbreak that killed more than a million Americans.
“I’m afraid people are going to die,” Dingell told CNN in an interview, a day after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took part in a combative Senate hearing on health care policies.
“If we get another COVID, we are not going to be ready, and people are going to die in mass numbers,” she added.
Kennedy, who has previously referred to COVID shots as the “deadliest vaccine ever made,” spent nearly three hours on Thursday defending his role as the nation’s top health official, as senators peppered him with questions about shifting vaccine policies and approaches to addressing infectious diseases.
“We were lied to about everything,” Kennedy told lawmakers.
Dingell, 71, told CNN that she has witnessed medical advancements through her life and hopes that science can prevail, despite growing vaccine hesitancy.
“I’m very careful; I was scared to death to get the COVID vaccine, but I got it because it was saving lives,” she said. “We need educated consumers, but we cannot throw this all out.”
Florida unveiled plans this week to become the first state to repeal long-standing school vaccine mandates.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said Wednesday. “I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”
Dingell said she worries that it will spark a trend that other states will follow.
“I remember measles, chickenpox and mumps — I had all of them, and people die sometimes of them,” the Michigan Democrat said. “We have seen epidemics of measles in the past year in different locations around this country, including Michigan.”
Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer and long-time vaccine skeptic, has backed changes to federal recommendations on COVID-19 vaccines, which has limited their availability in some states. Additionally, the HHS chief cut funding for mRNA research that was crucial to President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” endeavor during his first administration that expedited the approval of COVID-19 vaccines.
He testified that he did not know how many Americans died of COVID-19 and wasn’t sure whether vaccines prevented deaths related to the virus.
Senators also questioned the recent leadership upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Kennedy.
“We are the sickest country in the world — that’s why we have to fire people at the CDC,” the health secretary responded. “I need to fire some of those people to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
