During Wednesday night’s Republican Presidential Debate, moderator Megyn Kelly asked Vivek Ramaswamy about Operation Warp Speed and the COVID-19 shots developed during President Donald J. Trump’s time in the White House.
Kelly noted liability protections provided to vaccine manufacturers and talked about the government’s program to compensate for vaccine harms, noting that critics say it is a “black hole of bureaucracy.” She noted that 12,000 claims have been filed, 10 percent have been decided and only eight payouts have happened so far in a forum with no right to counsel, no hearings, no appeals.
“Mr. Trump says he’s very proud of Warp Speed, should he be,” Kelly asked.
Ramaswamy noted that the question of liability goes back to President Ronald Reagan. And he said this was an area where Reagan erred.
“To say that one kind of manufacturer, a vaccine manufacturer, cannot be sued for their product liability — I’ve pledged, as part of my legislative agenda, we will repeal that,” Ramaswamy said. “Just like we will repeal every other form of crony capitalism. People who have been harmed by those vaccines deserve accountability. They cannot be forgotten Americans.”
He went on to state one of the top lessons learned from COVID was that free speech is “most important in those alleged times of emergency.”
“If we had been allowed to openly debate the merits of those vaccines, they would never have been mandated in the way that they were,” he said.
