U.S. Army Lt. Col. Paul Douglas Hague raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he admitted to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he had received all the vaccines mandated for service members but wouldn’t receive the COVID-19 shot because of “freedom.”
Hague said he objected to the Pentagon’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination order and would rather quit the military after 18 years of service, and two years prior to retirement, than be inoculated from the disease with shots that have been safely administered to billions of people worldwide and proven to break the link between transmission and serious illness and death. Hague submitted his resignation last week.
“I don’t want the COVID vaccine and I don’t plan on getting it. But I’ve had all of the other Army vaccines. I’ve had eight anthrax shots. I’ve had the smallpox vaccination. I’ve had them all,” Hague said.
“So it’s really not about whether or not I’ll get the shot. This is really about the freedom of the American people,” he continued. “The right to choose your own medical procedures. The right to decide what’s gonna be injected into your body and what’s not. That’s a natural human right that we can’t take away from people. And I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution which affords those rights to the Americans.”
Hannity hailed Hague as “principled.”
COVID-19 has now killed more than 681,000 Americans.
Around 2,000 more people, mainly unvaccinated, are currently dying from the disease nationwide each day as the highly transmissible delta variant continues to spread.
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