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Johnson’s Love of Canada and Personal Medical Journey

Day 1 · 0:35:53 · Ron Johnson · Dean Allison

  • ❤️ Johnson opens by declaring deep affection for Canada, fishing trips and shared Magna Carta heritage.
  • 👶 He recounts his daughter’s life-saving surgery for transposition of the great arteries and lifelong respect for clinicians.
  • 🩺 That experience shaped his view that the doctor-patient relationship and medical practice should have guided the pandemic response.

Personal background that informed how the Senator approached COVID policy.

← Johnson’s Oversight Record on COVID and Vaccines | Formal Testimony: Early Data Versus Draconian Fear →

Transcript

Ron Johnson · 0:35:53

Well, before I answer that, let me just, uh, first of all, thank you for your kind introduction. Uh, want to make a couple quick points. Um, I genuinely and sincerely I absolutely love Canada and Canadians. I imagine that's without dispute. I started traveling up to Canada as a teenager, living in Minneapolis, driving 24 hours up into Manitoba past the paw to fish at Reed Lake and a little lake called Lake Macrossan, where we crazily portaged our fishing boats through over beaver dams, over a hill into this little lake. I'm not quite sure why my dad thought we had to drive 24 hours to get good fishing. Because for the last 40 years I've been making an annual trip up to Lake of the Woods, and I've got a place, Pipestone Point Resort, just south of Kenora. And I've enjoyed shore lunch, chomping on your, your walleye for virtually every year, last 40 years. My trips to, uh, you know, the wonderful national parks— Banff, Jasper, Whistler, Blackcomb— you know, always in terms of just getting the accommodations set, talking to people, you know, being greeted, and, and You know, those individuals who run the resorts, just the kindest people.

Ron Johnson · 0:37:07

And again, it literally, it breaks my heart to see in one sporting event where America's national anthem was booed. And again, I'm not assessing blame. I mean, we, we come from the same basic heritage, Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian. Our governments, where they differ, they're still premised foundationally on the magnificent Magna Carta. So I just want to start out because there will be things that will be critical here. There's no doubt about it. But I need to convey I love Canada and I genuinely love Canadians. And we need to repair that breach. We need to focus on those areas of agreement and follow, you know, move forward as strong allies and strong nations. Second point, I'm going to be violating my own basic rule in terms of opening statements. I'm pretty much a till the hanisei, 5 minutes, 600-700 words. But as we discussed yesterday and last night, this inquiry really does require the table being set, really taking a look at what's happened before.

Ron Johnson · 0:38:16

So I'm going to drone on longer than that. But what I'll try and do is I'll probably interrupt myself myself, uh, do a couple charts. I like charts, but I encourage, and I truly appreciate the Members of Parliament here showing up here. Interrupt me, ask questions. I think this should be a discussion, uh, you know, rather than have, you know, long periods of, uh, you know, the guy— I'm a U.S. Senator, I know how to think that This is not your traditional vaccine. And jot that down as a question to ask. We'll kind of delve into definition of gene therapy, how they changed the definition of a vaccine during the pandemic. But those are my first points. And since you led with the question too, just in terms of my background, what I brought into The pandemic. You know, I'm an accountant by educational training.

Ron Johnson · 0:39:17

I ran a manufacturing plant for 30-some years supplying, quite honestly, the medical device industry. So I know all kinds of things about GMP and traceability and, you know, what the medical industry does to ensure quality. Um, I was HSGAC chair, uh, leading up to the pandemic, and, and we held hearings on biotax simulations. Again, we'll talk, probably talk about Event 201. There's nothing wrong in trying to prepare for these things. The problem is we took those preparations, threw them all out the window, and engaged in what I would call tyranny. Probably the most relevant part of my background that impacts how I approached COVID was the fact that our first child, our daughter Carrie, was born with a very serious congenital heart defect. It was called transposition of the great arteries. So her aorta and pulmonary artery were reversed. She in effect had two circulatory systems, one that just circulated blood through her lungs and one that circulated blood through the body.

Ron Johnson · 0:40:18

Now when you're in, in utero, that, that's fine because you've got holes in your heart that allows that blood to circulate. So the first day of life when she was diagnosed, a wonderful pediatric cardiologist came at 1:30 in morning, catheterized her, put that catheter through that hole in the heart, blew up a balloon, ripped it through that membrane to allow her blood to oxygenate for— they hoped it'd be 2 years. Care got downstream about 8 months, at which point, when her heart is the size of a small plum, in 7 hours of open heart surgery, they completely rebaffled the upper chamber heart. Now medicine has progressed to they just change the arteries, right? Makes sense. That was about a 50% mortality procedure back then. So they rebaffled the upper chamber of her heart. Her heart operates backwards to this day. But she's 42 years old. She's the mother of two wonderful children, my grandchildren, through surrogacy.

Ron Johnson · 0:41:20

And, and I raise that issue because I, I come into the pandemic with just a deep appreciation for doctors, for nurses, who in many respects are the primary caregivers. You know, doctors come in and they've got all their expertise, but it's the nurses that are sitting there and putting the IV lines and watching the patients and providing the care. Um, a deep appreciation for it, a deep respect for how far medicine has advanced, what we can do. I always heard the term medical practice and view that as a building, a clinic, a hospital. But it was during that period with my daughter I realized what the term medical practice truly meant. Practice is how we have advanced medicine. We've allowed doctors Doctors take that Hippocratic oath, be first responsible to the patient, use their skill, use their training, and they practice medicine.

Ron Johnson · 0:42:35

And the relationship between the patient and doctor should be inviolate. That should be what should have been driving what we're doing during the pandemic. Pandemic. Imagine what could have happened during the pandemic if we didn't have federal health agencies establishing these protocols, if we didn't have the experts who were completely wrong. But instead, if we allowed doctors to be doctors, practice medicine, practice the new tools, the internet, You know, back in the Spanish flu, we didn't have antibiotics. We didn't have the internet to rapidly, instantaneously transmit information. I don't know if you remember, remember those doctors in New York? I remember one in particular, I knew his name at one point in time, but he would, after a 14 or 16-hour shift, he'd come in front of his little camera and would convey to his colleagues around the country, around the world, this is what we're seeing, this is so unusual.

Dean Allison · 0:43:45

Unusual.

Ron Johnson · 0:43:45

People are coming in ambulatory, talking with unbelievably low oxygen rates. We've never seen anything like this before. There were doctors in California that were using these cheap generic drugs and having success. All those voices were silenced. They were canceled. And so if you ask my background, that's, you know, And, you know, I came into this with a deep appreciation, reverence for doctors, the medical establishment. And I was profoundly, and I have been profoundly saddened by what we witnessed over the last 5 years. So with that, let, let me start my my— will continue my filibuster but start my, my, my formal written testimony.