One of the lingering side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a healthy distrust of the government and medical experts.
State Sen. Larry Stutts (R-Tuscumbia) said their mishandling of the pandemic has caused many to lose faith in the medical industry and question long-held beliefs about medicine.
"[State Health Officer] Dr. [Scott] Harris was primarily following the CDC guidelines with some of the things that he did with COVID. And he and I had this conversation privately several times during the process. And he was following the CDC guidelines. And those were terrible," Stutts, a doctor with decades of experience, said on a recent episode of "1819 News: The Podcast."
Things like masking, vaccine mandates and taking kids out of school were "absolutely the wrong thing to do" and likely slowed herd immunity, Stutts said.
"[T]he fact is, none of those things that Dr. [Anthony] Fauci recommended, that the CDC recommended, wearing masks, you know; we now know that didn't help. We now know that the vaccine was hurried to market," he said. "I mean, I took the vaccine when they were telling healthcare workers to all take the vaccine. I took two vaccines. But if I knew then what I know now, I would not have taken the vaccine. We were told all these things that, you know, if you get vaccinated, we'll stop the spread. If you get vaccinated, you can't catch COVID. You know, none of those things turned out to be true… The thing I hate about the whole process, besides the fact that it didn't work, is that it has destroyed people's confidence in medicine in general. It has destroyed people's confidence in science."
He continued, "It's the biggest detriment to society in general is that those levels of confidence have been destroyed, and including vaccinations. You know, I practiced medicine for 32 years. I've never seen a case of measles in a patient, you know, because we all got MMR vaccines. You know, I'm barely old enough, but old enough to remember polio. There were children two or three years ahead of me in school that had polio. And, you know, when I was five years old, I think was when the polio vaccine came out. And, you know, who knows anybody with polio now? But the unfortunate thing is because of the distrust that's been built with the COVID vaccine. People are going to forgo vaccines that have had a generational impact. And, you know, like I said, things like measles, polio, mumps, I mean, those things are unheard of now. But it's because they were effective vaccines. But people are afraid of vaccines in general now because of the debacle with the COVID vaccine."
Stutts has supported or led the way in the state legislature on many public health issues like the medical age of consent, in vitro fertilization and supporting rural hospitals. He said one way to win back the public's trust would be to promote medical freedom over mandates.
"You're going to take the vaccine and you think the vaccine works, then why do you care whether I take it or not? If it prevents you from getting it, whether I take it or not should not matter to you. You're already protected. So my protection should be my personal freedom," he added.
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