CNN's Don Lemon calls for 'rules' to force vaccinations: 'It has nothing to do with freedom ... liberty'

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In media news today, The Tampa Bay Times runs a 'hit piece' on DeSantis' press secretary, NPR gets mocked for a new policy allowing journalists to advocate for the 'freedom and dignity of human beings,' and NBCUniversal's CEO insists Tokyo Olympics will still be profitable despite massive viewership drop

CNN's Don Lemon ranted Thursday against individuals who've not yet been vaccinated against the coronavirus and called for "rules" to be put in place that would force people to take a vaccine. 

"I don’t know if we can get this under control, and we had the opportunity to," Lemon told fellow CNN host Chris Cuomo during a discussion on the Delta variant of the coronavirus. "None of this had to happen. Children didn’t have to start getting sick. If we didn’t allow this virus to mutate and this variant to catch on, we could’ve had this under control."

Lemon claimed the only people to blame were the unvaccinated themselves and that they were responsible for putting the country "in the position that we're in." He stated he wasn't "shaming" unvaccinated people and that he was just telling the truth, but then stopped himself to suggest that maybe they should be "shamed."

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Cuomo and Lemon both agreed in criticizing the CDC for not releasing the newest data that it says prompted the updated mask guidance to include vaccinated individuals in high transmission areas of the virus. They also suggested it should be more out front with its messaging.

"You have to [have] … a more concerted effort to say get vaccinated, because you're not just killing yourself, you’re going to kill other people," Lemon said. "You've got to start telling people, if you don’t get vaccinated, you can’t come into this office or this place of business. If you don’t get vaccinated, you can’t come to work. If you don’t get vaccinated, you can’t come into this gym. If you don’t get vaccinated, you can’t get onto this airplane. It has nothing to do with freedom. It has nothing to do with liberty. You don’t have the freedom and the liberty to put other people in jeopardy."

"You have to drive the speed limit. You have to obey the rules. Put some rules in place, that will demand that people get vaccinated," he added. "You can’t just go around and say, well, look, it’s my personal freedom and my liberty. I want to go 150 miles an hour if I want to. Sure, you can but you have to suffer the consequences for it, whether you kill yourself or you get a citation and — or your driver’s license gets taken away. You have to have certain rules in a society if we all are going to continue to live and keep each other alive. You cannot be that selfish, and quite frankly, that ignorant."

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Lemon made a similar suggestion on another occasion, that if a person didn't receive a vaccine, then they shouldn't be allowed to go to the supermarket, work, sporting events and other public places. "That's where I think we should be right now," he said.