Jerry Nadler: “Yet again, we have another amendment aimed at dividing us instead of allowing us to serve the people who elected us.…”

“Yet again, we have another amendment aimed at dividing us instead of allowing us to serve the people who elected us. Vaccinations help us eradicate terrible diseases, like smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, tuberculosis, rubella, and on and on and on. Adding this amendment would not help us govern. It will not help us serve our constituents. Instead, it would just serve to undermine necessary health and safety rules. We here in this Chamber cannot know what contagious diseases we may face in the future, and I oppose any amendment that would undermine our ability to protect our constituents. Madam Chair, before I was allowed to go to school--I won't tell you how many years ago that was--I had to be vaccinated for diphtheria, for whopping cough, for the diseases that they then knew how to vaccinate against. Nothing has changed. We are to vaccinate people to prevent diseases and pandemics. The fact of the matter is that people should be required to be vaccinated, especially a nurse, a nurse who is dealing with patients, who is breathing on those patients. She can transmit the disease. So certainly, she should be required to be vaccinated because the vaccination not only protects her, but it also protects against transmission of the disease to the next person. The healthcare worker certainly ought to be required to be vaccinated. When we have a pandemic like the COVID-19 pandemic that we had, 2- year-olds should have been required to wear masks.…”