With his home state in the throes of a deadly coronavirus surge, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise told CBS’s “Face The Nation” that he believes encouragement rather than shame is called for when urging unvaccinated Americans to get the shot.
“What we need to be doing is encouraging people to get vaccinated, not trying to shame people who are unvaccinated or people that got vaccinated,” Scalise said. “I had antibodies, so I ultimately made the decision once I saw the Delta variant picking up, I thought it was important to get vaccinated.”
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Scalise, who didn't get his own vaccination until July, said he believes educating holdouts on vaccine safety is the way to boost Louisiana’s lagging vaccination rate.
“I have high confidence in this vaccination,” he said. “It’s safe and effective. And I think we ought to be encouraging more people to do it. But again, not shaming people who haven’t. We gotta be getting them information, encouraging people to go talk to their doctors because there is real hesitancy out there… We ought to be confronting that, not trying to divide people based on who is vaccinated and who is unvaccinated.”
Louisiana’s hospitals are approaching peak capacity, and 91% of patients in need of a hospital bed are unvaccinated, according to the Louisiana Health Department.
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