Watch: What Nick Offerman told Congress about the COVID-19 vaccine – Deseret News

Actor Nick Offerman wants you to get the coronavirus vaccine. So much that he testified while under oath to Congress on Wednesday about vaccine hesitancy and the importance that all Americans act, not as individuals, but as a good neighbor.

The actor, who is also a professional woodworker and small-business owner, addressed members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations at a Wednesday hearing titled, A shot at normalcy: Building COVID-19 vaccine confidence. A panel of medical and health care experts followed Offerman with their own testimonies.

The subcommittee hearing comes as coronavirus vaccination rates in the county have leveled off this last month, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Offerman who played government bureaucracy skeptic Ron Swanson on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation told House subcommittee members that, as an actor, author and woodworker he would not be offering medical advice, but would address the subcommittee as a medically ignorant representative of feet on the ground, hands in the dirt, people across our country whose lives and livelihoods have taken a pounding from this pandemic, according to an official recording of the hearing that was later uploaded to YouTube. He added that he was also speaking from his personal perspective as a small-business owner and proud Midwesterner.

He understands why people have called the vaccine a miracle, given the speed of development and success the vaccine, but said calling it a miracle wasnt quite accurate, Offerman said.

Offerman told the subcommittee, that like many Americans, his work as an actor was temporarily halted during the pandemic and only resumed because actors and crews of those shows listened to the doctors and we thought about each other.

His business, the Offerman Woodshop, and partnered nonprofit Would Works which trains and employs homeless Los Angelinas were only able to reopen after development of the vaccine, he said.

The actor and woodworker also blamed disinformation from social media platforms with no oversight for the mask and vaccine hesitancy hes seen in his own family in Illinois. He again encouraged people to follow the science and success of the vaccine.

Later in the hearing, Offermam called on Americans to get the coronavirus vaccine, not just for their own health, but as a member of a community, or as a good neighbor, or a good citizen.

You can watch all of Offermans testimony, and those of the panel of medical professionals, here: A Shot at Normalcy: Building COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence

And, if like Ron Swanson youd prefer to skip the congressional bureaucracy at the beginning of Wednesdays panel, Offerman begins his testimony around 34:30 into the hearing.

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Watch: What Nick Offerman told Congress about the COVID-19 vaccine - Deseret News