Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, also a retired neurosurgeon, Thursday on Newsmax urged "common sense" when considering COVID-19 vaccinations for children under the age of 5, after advisers for the Food and Drug Administration recommended the shots be approved.
"There are some people who are very concerned and they want the vaccine, and I'm glad that it would be available for them," Carson said on Newsmax's "National Report." "The problem I have is, trying to create an environment where you push people into having to have the vaccine."
Instead, Carson said he is "totally for choice" and that it would be "nice to apply a little bit of common sense here as well," considering the chances of a young child facing severe complications or death from COVID is .25%."
"That's approaching zero," said Carson. "We don't know what the long-term complications are of this type of technology. We don't know what's going to happen 5, 10, 15 years down the line. Why would you trade almost zero for not knowing what's going to happen in the future?"
Carson also on Thursday took on the division that has come from the Biden administration against Republicans, including criticisms of an "ultra-MAGA agenda."
"It seems as though they're focusing on a lot of things that are not that critical right now. When you look at the things that American families are facing, I think this is probably a peripheral issue," said Carson. "Our Judeo-Christian values teach us that we're to love everybody. But that doesn't necessarily mean we have to embrace everything that everybody does. There's a big difference there."
But characterizing opponents as "haters" is "absolutely absurd and antithetical to the principles of the founding of this nation, particularly free speech and freedom of thought," Carson said.
The former secretary also commented on the gas price crisis, including the White House's steps to accuse the nations' oil companies of keeping prices high for profit.
"There's a failure to use logic and common sense here," said Carson. "We had a situation where we had the cleanest air and the cleanest water that we've had since those things have been measured. While we were extracting our fossil fuels and using them, we had an abundance of them."
But with the use of renewable energy something desirable, "why not use what we have to get what we want?" said Carson. "This doesn't have to be you in this corner and them in this corner tried to the end. This can be a cooperative effort in which we continue to use what we have while we work on the other, and we substitute it as it becomes feasible and reasonable."
Carson added that it makes "no sense" to seek oil from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, "and get oil that is less clean" rather than drilling domestically.
"If people knew what was behind all of this, I think many of them would be horrified," said Carson. "I think behind this is an agenda to fundamentally change America into to something else, instead of letting our free market reign, which has created enormous prosperity for our people, and people throughout the world. [They] want to have something controllable by a central government and control of all of our lives."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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