In the latest reveal sure to further erode confidence in government and medical institutions charged to ensure our welfare, leaked audio shows former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins reportedly laughing off the idea of “forcing people to get vaccinations under the threat of job loss,” according to The Blaze.
Leaked audio obtained by the Daily Wire, shows Collins, who has claimed that he and Dr. Anthony Fauci are “not political figures,” made politically-charged statements at a private event at the University of Chicago last October.
His statements included disparaging remarks about former President Trump and touting the government’s power to force mask and vaccine mandates.
Russell Moore, a reported friend of Collins, hosted the event at the University of Chicago. Moore serves as director of public theology at the left-leaning Christianity Today publication. The event was coordinated by the Institute of Politics, an organization founded and led by David Axelrod, former senior adviser to former President Obama.
At the event, Collins blamed Trump for the deaths attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also expressed anger at Trump for “shifting blame to him and Fauci, consequently damaging their reputations,” according to the Daily Wire.
However, Collins took no responsibility for his mismanagement of the pandemic—including advocating business breaking lockdowns, mental health impacting school closures, restrictions on life-saving medications, promoting ineffective mask mandates, and strongarm tactics to silence dissent or discussion on the origin of the virus.
Collins claimed: “Great harm was done to the people in this nation by a very, very self-involved and misguided president in the previous administration. Hundreds of thousands of people have died who should not have had to do so. And so there was an effort to try to distract from that dreadful circumstance by finding somebody else to blame.”
Leaked audio reportedly notes that Collins also said:
“The U.S. government does have the authority to mandate vaccinations if there is an outbreak that is threatening people, because it’s not just about you, it’s about the people you’re going to infect.”
“Do [mandates] convince people who otherwise wouldn’t get them?” he then asked rhetorically, before answering himself, “Oh yeah, especially if it means losing your job.”
Collins then callously spoke of the effectiveness of government-backed threats, noting that talk of threats at the institute garnered a “big response,” adding that even the “pretty darn resistant” decided to get vaccinated in the face of “being fired.”
Illustrating his complete lack of empathy for those forced to make difficult decisions impacting their health and career, Collins reportedly chuckled while saying, “You get the feeling that their resistance was not maybe quite that deeply seated.”
Condescendingly, he quipped, “They’re sort of thinking to themselves, you know, maybe I really should do it, but if I do, I lose my credibility with my peeps.”
According to the Daily Wire, during the event, Moore stated that he invited Collins to profile the efforts they have made, “separately and together, to deal with evangelical resistance to the vaccine with COVID and some of the controversies we’ve had over masking and government mandates.”
Tellingly, both remarked that they were enjoying the chance to speak freely since the event was not being recorded.
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