Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO 4th district) said he will not be taking the COVID vaccine as political leaders and health experts urge Americans to get vaccinated.
Buck said he won’t be vaccinated because “I’m an American. I have the freedom to decide if I’m gonna take a vaccine or not and in this case I’m not going to take the vaccine.”
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His comments came on the same day that Mike Pence and Surgeon General Jerome Adams tried to increase public confidence in the vaccine by filming themselves getting the injection.
But, the Colorado Republican is still raising concerns about the side effects of the vaccine.
“I am more concerned about the safety of the vaccine than I am about the side effects of the disease,” Buck said when he was asked why he wasn’t taking the vaccine. “I’m a healthy person and I think most Americans are healthy. I think what we should do is we should focus on the at-risk populations in America, make sure those are the people who get this vaccine first, make sure the health care workers that want the vaccine get the vaccine as soon as possible. But I am not going to take a vaccine.”
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Buck later told the Denver Post in a phone interview that he wasn’t trying to suggest the vaccine is unsafe. “What I was trying to say is that every individual should be allowed to weigh various factors.”
The congressman is 61-years-old and is a cancer survivor.
Good to know that you had enuf faith in medicine to have your cancer addressed but when it comes to a vaccine that, if given to enuf people, could help not just you but countless others, you decline. The side effects of this vaccine are nothing compared to Covid. And yes, as an rmergency physician I have cared for numerous patients with this deadly and now preventable disease