'Has he had a severe head injury?': Ron Johnson ripped for denying COVID is a 'deadly disease'

In an interview on Fox News late Friday night, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) dismissed the idea of mandating vaccinations for COVID-19, saying mandates should only used in the case of an "incredibly deadly disease."

Speaking on the "Ingraham Angle" with guest host Brian Kilmeade, Johnson was asked, "Could you ever get behind a vaccine mandate for everybody?" to which he replied, "No, not unless there's some incredibly deadly disease. I mean, much higher infection-fatality rates than we have with COVID."

Without noting the over 613,000 Americans who have already succumbed to the deadly disease in just over a year -- and the frightening increase in new infections due to a variant -- Johnson added, "We don't know the final infection-fatality rate but right now it's looking like it's not going to be much more than double a bad season of flu."

Those comments set off a furious backlash from critics of the Republican lawmaker with one person calling the senator a "loud idiot."

You can see some responses below: