RANKING MEMBER CORREA DELIVERS OPENING STATEMENT IN SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING: “FOLLOW THE SCIENCE?: OVERSIGHT OF THE BIDEN COVID-19 ADMINISTRATIVE STATE RESPONSE”

June 26, 2024

RANKING MEMBER CORREA DELIVERS OPENING STATEMENT IN SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING: "FOLLOW THE SCIENCE?: OVERSIGHT OF THE BIDEN COVID-19 ADMINISTRATIVE STATE RESPONSE"

Watch Today's Hearing HERE

WASHINGTON - Today, Ranking Member Correa (CA-46), the top Democrat on the House Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Subcommittee, led his Democratic colleagues during a hearing entitled "Follow the Science?: Oversight of the Biden Covid-19 Administrative State Response."

You can watch today's hearing HERE.

You will find below Ranking Member Correa's opening statement, as prepared for delivery:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to welcome the witnesses.

Let me start by saying that vaccines are true miracles; they have saved at least 150 million lives in the last 50 years. Their development represents the best of human ingenuity, and this is no more evident than with the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, which began with former President Trump's successful Operation Warp Speed and was carried through by President Biden.

My hats are off to the great scientists who created these vaccines and the leaders at the FDA and CDC who made the brave decisions to get them out to the people as quickly as possible while still making sure that the vaccine shots were safe and effective.

People have worked tirelessly over the years monitoring the safety of the vaccines - and they learned from this, constantly improving their knowledge and applying it quickly. They faced an almost impossible task - battling an emerging, devasting, and rapidly changing crisis. They fought through exhaustion and disappointment. They explored every avenue to combat this killing machine.

Facing unprecedented circumstances, they did what we all try to do, make the best, most rational decision with the information in front of us. Time has proven that they made the right decisions, and those decisions saved millions of American lives.

Does that mean no mistakes we made? No, and lessons can be learned? Yes. But hyper-focusing on potential misstatements that may undermine the critically important work that was done, is not the answer.

In fact, in the US alone, between December 2020 and November 2022, the COVID-19 vaccines saved more than 3.2 million lives and kept more than 18.5 million people out of the hospital.

These are not just numbers. These are real people. Our friends, family, and neighbors are alive and healthy today because of these incredible vaccines.

Today, I am reminded of the darkest days of the Pandemic. The fear and anxiety as we watched the COVID virus take so many people, over 1.1 million Americans to date. I remember, morgues overflowing, our emergency rooms packed, and our doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel exhausted, both emotionally and physically.

Like all of you, I too worried for my children and wife and the elderly in my family. My wife, as an OB-GYN working the hospital ER. She treated women in the ER, walk-in patients, whom she'd never met. She did her job, delivering babies, in the middle of the pandemic without COVID-19 vaccines. My wife was part of the happiness and joy felt by parents at the birth of a healthy child.

The arrival of the first vaccine shots brought a wave of relief. A hope that many lives would be spared from such a horrible and tragic death. I heard from friends how relieved they were when they received the vaccine. The vaccines aren't a cure-all, but they vastly improved American's chances of survival. We should not make perfect the enemy of the good.

Make no mistake, this hearing is not actually about transparency and decisions made at the FDA and CDC under unprecedented pressure and constantly changing circumstances. I am all in favor of transparency and learning from mistakes. However, this hearing is really about the vaccines themself. It contrasts those who support science and understand and appreciate the life-saving value of vaccines and those who don't.

Today, we will hear much information and misinformation, the kind causing unwarranted angst and leading some well-intended people and parents to avoid vaccines for themselves and their children.

During the Pandemic, Americans were told by some doctors to take Ivermectin, a drug used to kill parasites, or hydroxychloroquine even after it became clear that they provided no benefit.

Some suggested exploring remedies like injecting bleach or inhaling hydrogen peroxide. And people were falsely told that the vaccines were unsafe, ineffective, cause infertility, and would increase the likelihood of their death or outright kill them. Fortunately, most Americans didn't listen to this nonsense.

Most disturbingly, some medical professionals made gross misstatements, suggesting the vaccines were worthless because they didn't completely stop infections, even though they knew the vaccines were designed to prevent the worst outcomes by reducing severe disease, hospitalizations, and death.

The vaccines successfully reduced transmission by reducing infection rates, yet these same people wrongly argued that waning protection meant they didn't work. They refused to admit that infection-induced immunity also waned, claiming previously infected people were immune causing too many people to reject the vaccines. There are simply too many of these erroneous statements to repeat.

Disinformation has driven a reduction in vaccinations, especially in children. Promoting misinformation is amoral, unethical, and deadly. The modern-day attack on vaccines began with the retracted and highly discredited paper linking autism to vaccines. As a result of the ensuing confusion, too many parents are refusing to vaccinate their children.

As a parent, I understand the desire for answers and an explanation when something bad happens to your child. It is heartbreaking, but making false conclusions can do real damage, including undermining the herd immunity that comes from large percentages of a population being vaccinated.

Herd immunity protects everyone, especially the most vulnerable amongst us-infants, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. As a society and as human beings we owe them protection - and that is what vaccines do.

Just one example, the surge in outbreaks of Measles, a highly contagious virus that can cause death, shows the dangers.

In this country, we went from nearly 500,000 Measles cases in 1963 before the vaccine was approved to under 100 in recent years. In 2000, Measles was declared eradicated in the United States but that could be reversed as falling vaccination numbers have made Measles outbreaks more common.

One of the worst outbreaks in modern times occurred right in my hometown in Anaheim in 2014. Hundreds of people got Measles, with many hospitalized. In 2019, one of the worst years on record since vaccinations became commonplace, there were 1,249 Measles cases reported, with 89% of the patients unvaccinated or who had unknown vaccination status, and 10 percent were hospitalized. There have been 11 outbreaks reported in 2024 alone. And for those who think Measles isn't serious, I suggest you speak with a doctor who treats these patients.

Nothing in life is without risk, including vaccines but the benefits of vaccination astronomically outweigh the risks for society at large. We have created programs to deal with vaccine risks. Of the over 5 billion immunizations given since 2006, there have been only 8,600 compensated cases, of which 5300 were settlements awarded by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, using a relatively low standard since VICP errs on the side of compensation.

Mr. Chair, I see today's hearing as an opportunity to right some of the wrongs that occurred during the Pandemic. To shine a light on the misinformation about vaccines, and specifically the COVID-19 vaccines.

And we should applaud the outstanding work, initially under former President Trump's orders and then President Biden, done by our scientists at our federal agencies, as well as other institutions and companies that brought us these lifesaving treatments.

We have a responsibility to all Americans to shoot down conspiracy theories and misstatements that cause grave harm to the American people, especially those most vulnerable--our young children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. I am proud to do my part.

With that, I yield.

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