On Monday’s episode of “Mad Money,” CNBC host Jim Cramer makes the case for a federal vaccine mandate.
Real Clear Politics has the full transcript of the rant:
“With the new Omicron Variant sweeping the globe, how do we finally put an end to this pandemic? How do we save lives and get business back to normal so everybody can put dinner on the table?
“Simple, the federal government needs to require vaccines, including booster shots, for everyone in America by, say, January 1st.
“There are still some things that need to be done at a national level and this is one of them. But as we brace for another wave of new deaths, it’s time to admit that our government has lost the ability, or the will, to make our people do the right thing. Nobody wants to be the bad guy, so we’ve allowed a pastiche of uncoordinated health organizations to dictate an on-again, off-again series of measures that mostly just leave us baffled and confused.
“We haven’t centralized the issue to the point the White House seems to take responsibility.
“First, it was the CDC, and the FDA and the National Institutes of Health, mostly coordinating policy through talk shows. Then we left vaccination policies to individual companies. Now it is toothless OSHA going back and forth on what’s allowed. But nobody with any power is saying the front-line workers need to be vaccinated. It’s just plain wrong and most of us are sick of it, even as a vocal anti-vax minority is always grabbing the mic.
“This charade must end. The government must require vaccinations. Not of this group or that group, not by company or cruise ship or airline. The buck stops at the White House.
“Some of us are old enough to remember we had to get a needle stuck into our arm because of some disease so scary we were afraid to talk about it, it was called Polio. No one knew how you got it but you were scared to go to a place where anyone might congregate. A swimming pool, a park.
“Then we got a vaccine that worked and President Eisenhower said we would end Polio. He pulled it off because he didn’t give us any choice.
“Soon after, as if the needle were too hard, they came up with a sugar cube. They, being the scientists at the time, we lined up and took them too. Mine tasted like cherries.
“Lord knows what happened if you didn’t partake, but back then, anyone who refused to get vaccinated would get ratted out immediately because we knew that person could hurt other people.
“Now we’re engaged in a similar struggle with Covid and Eisenhower would be aghast. We have immunocompromised people who are incubators for every variant to come, walking around lawfully unvaccinated. That’s psychotic. We have companies backing down. We have governors that want to be president by grandstanding on a foolish states rights issue, the right to get sick and get others sick?
“It’s time to admit we have to go to war against Covid. Require vaccinations universally. And have the military run it. If you don’t want to get vaccinated, you better be ready to prove your conscientious objector status in court, and even then you need to help in the war effort by staying home until we finally beat this thing.
“Then you know what would happen, there’s a new variant in some unvaccinated part of the world and someone flies here from there and some of us will get the flu and we’ll take a pill from Pfizer and it will be like influenza. It will kill some, but not many. Maybe 50,000, the average flu deaths, not 500,000.
“Until the federal government gets serious and starts requiring vaccinations nationwide, you better get used to more Covid variant freakouts like we had last Friday.
“They represent our sorry, no good, all-our-fault future. And it will keep being our fault until our leaders stop bending over backward for the not-so-conscientious objectors. I like to say there’s always a bull market somewhere. I promise to try to find it for you right here on “Mad Money.”
