U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Thursday that it is “absolutely the government’s business” to know which Americans are vaccinated.
Earlier in the week, during a speech updating the country’s vaccination efforts, President Joe Biden said that "we need to go to community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oftentimes, door-to-door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus."
The comments set off a firestorm of retorts by Republicans, including from Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs, who tweeted "It’s NONE of the (government’s) business knowing who has or hasn’t been vaccinated."
Becerra defiantly dismissed those remarks Thursday during an interview with CNN.
"Perhaps we should point out that the federal government had to spend trillions of dollars to try and keep Americans alive during this pandemic so it is absolutely the government’s business," Becerra, who served as California Attorney General from 2017 until his cabinet appointment this year, said.
"It is taxpayers’ business if we have to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting COVID and helping reopen the economy. It is our business to try to make sure Americans can prosper."
Of the more than 9,000 people who died from coronavirus in June, 99.2% of them were unvaccinated. Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said that those deaths were largely "avoidable and preventable."
As of July 4, about 67% of Americans have been vaccinated.
"Knocking down a door has never been against the law, you don’t have to answer, but we hope you do," Becerra continued. "If you haven’t been vaccinated, we can help dispel some of those rumors that you’ve heard and hopefully get you vaccinated."
The comments come as the Delta variant continues to emerge as a serious threat, especially to the unvaccinated. Last month, the variant became California’s most dominant COVID-19 strain and accounted for 51.7% of the cases nationwide.
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