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Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022

Has Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake said she opposes all vaccines?

Ngan Nguyen, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
no

Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor, has not explicitly stated that she opposes all vaccines, as some have claimed. However, she has repeatedly expressed her opposition to mandates involving the COVID-19 vaccine, particularly for children.In a campaign message recorded at Arizona State University in 2021, Lake called such mandates “unscientific and tyrannical.” At an October 2022 campaign event, she said she would fight COVID-19 vaccine requirements for students “with every fiber in (her) being.”“This is an experimental shot. Our children are not guinea pigs,” Lake told the crowd. “We’re not going to force our precious healthy children to get a shot that is already proving to be not only ineffective, it’s also proving to be very dangerous.”The Centers for Disease Control has deemed COVID-19 vaccines both safe and effective for adults and children.

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The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is the state’s only independent, nonpartisan and collaborative nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. AZCIR's mission is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable by exposing injustice and systemic inequities through investigative journalism.

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