(Headline USA) Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, was caught laughing at the idea of using the threat of unemployment to force people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a leaked audio recording, obtained by the Daily Wire.
During a private event at the University of Chicago, Collins said the federal government could use peoples’ jobs against them to “encourage” vaccination, citing the 1905 Supreme Court case Jacobson v. Massachusetts.
“There’s no question in my mind that the mandates are legal,” Collins said. “The U.S. government does have the authority to mandate vaccinations if there is an outbreak that is threatening people, because it’s not just about you, it’s about the people you’re going to infect.”
He went on to argue that federal vaccine mandates were not just legal, but also effective.
“Do [mandates] convince people who otherwise wouldn’t get them? Oh yeah, especially if it means losing your job,” he said, laughing.
As evidence, he described how the threat of unemployment convinced thousands of his employees at the NIH to get the jab, even if they were hesitant to do so.
“Reality [was] sinking in,” he recalled, forcing even the “pretty darn resistant” to get vaccinated. He then quipped, “You get the feeling that their resistance was not maybe quite that deeply seated.”
Collins also claimed vaccine mandates from the government are the excuse many vaccine-hesitant individuals need.
“’Well, my employer made me do it. I didn’t really want to get them,’” he said, hypothetically quoting a vaccine-hesitant person.
“They get, you know, bonus points, because they’re now a victim,” he continued. “But they’ve also gotten the mandated vaccine that they kind of wanted anyway.”
Collins resigned from the NIH in October just weeks after documents exposed that he had made “untruthful” comments about the agency’s role in funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
