WASHINGTON—As the Omicron variant spreads, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on Wednesday blasted Republicans on the U.S. Senate floor for their war on vaccines and COVID-19 testing. Murphy specifically called out Senate Republicans for their carelessness in attacking the Biden administration’s campaign to vaccinate and test more Americans, which has further fueled anti-science, anti-vaccine efforts.

“This general lack of seriousness from our Republican colleagues about a plague that has killed 700,000 Americans – it’s just stunning to me, it’s just stunning. These aren’t bee stings. These aren’t knee scrapes,” said Murphy. “This is a deadly pandemic that has ended the life of 700,000 of our mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers prematurely. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who should be sitting at the Christmas table, who should be at Hanukkah celebrations with their families this month, and they are gone.”

Murphy continued: “But apparently, the inconvenience of a weekly test is so odious, is so revolting, that it’s worth another 700,000 people dying. Because that’s what we’re talking about. A weekly test. The OSHA rule does not mandate the vaccine. It’s a way out of the weekly test. A weekly test that is a little swab swirled around your nostril five or six times for thirty seconds. That’s the requirement. That’s the cost, the sky-high, constitution-violating, unpatriotic cost that Republicans have been down here on the floor railing against for a month.”

Murphy concluded: “Estimates suggest that that requirement can save thousands of lives. But apparently the cost of a nose tickle is too great a cost to pay to save thousands and thousands of Americans from dying from a preventable pandemic.”

Click here to watch his floor speech in full.

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