Matthew McConaughey came out against the vaccine mandates for children on Tuesday at the New York Times DealBook summit. The 52-year-old actor is vaccinated.
Despite liberal actor Matthew McConaughey and his wife being vaccinated, he told Andrew Ross Sorkin that he wants to wait for more information. Which is smart considering this is an experimental gene therapy that shouldn’t be mandated for anyone, child or adult.
“I’m vaccinated. My wife’s vaccinated. I didn’t do it because someone told me I had to — [I] chose to do it,” he said. “Do I think that there’s any kind of scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no. We all got to get off that narrative. There’s not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines.”
McConaughey has been a big proponent of mask mandates and relies heavily on testing since the beginning of the pandemic.
“I’m in a position though where I can do that, and I understand that not everyone can do that,” he said.
“I’m not believing you’re really scared of this little cotton thing. I’m not believing you really feel that takes away your identity and your freedom,” he told “The Carlos Watson Show” earlier this year. “This is a short-term inconvenience for long-term freedom.”
“There’s no data that says it’s not a good [thing]. No data that says it’s harmful,” he added. “Let’s all take one for the team here.”
U. S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy came out after McConaughey’s statements to urge parents to vaccinate their small children with the experimental gene therapy.
“Many kids have died. Sadly, hundreds of children — thousands — have been hospitalized, and as a dad of a child who has been hospitalized several years ago for another illness, I would never wish upon any parent they have a child that ends up in the hospital,” Murthy told CNN after McConaughey’s remarks made headlines. “The vaccines have shown in these trials for children 5 through 11 they are more at 90% effective in protecting our kids from symptomatic infection, and they are remarkably safe as well.”Murthy added that he believes vaccinations are the right course for children.
“When we began the vaccination effort for adults, actually a few months before we had the vaccine available, if you looked at polls they showed about a third or so of adults were ready to go out and get the vaccine right away,” he said. “What changed, though, is then the FDA and CDC weighed in. People saw their friends and family get vaccinated.”
Murthy concluded, “People also recognized they were getting protected, and they got the chance to talk to their doctors about the vaccine. All of that is going to start happening now with vaccines for children, as well.”
McConaughey isn’t the only celebrity at least partially bucking the mandate trend. Emilio Estevez said a big no for himself with resulted in his removal from the Mighty Ducks spinoff on Disney+.
Unfortunately, though, McConaughey is a liberal who is opposed to Texas 6 week abortion ban, being rather outspoken about it while toying with the idea of running against current Republican Greg Abbott.
He has also posted to Instagram his love for the masks.
In a video post for July 4th in 2020, the actor wished America a “Happy Birthday” while encouraging people to continue wearing masks.
“Happy 244th birthday, America,” said McConaughey. “We are going through some growing pains on this one, aren’t we? But growing pains are a good thing, because how the hell else are we going to grow up? I think we gotta look each other in the eye. I think we gotta look ourselves in the eye.”
“We gotta look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘How can I be better? How can I expect more of myself and others? How can I be more responsible? How can I have more compassion? How can I have more courage? How can I be more fair? How do I make sure I wear the damn mask?” he continued.
