The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report detailing the Biden administration’s wasteful spending on COVID messaging.
According to the report, the Biden-Harris admin spent $900 million on false or misleading COVID-19 statements.
The report centers on the “We Can Do This” vaccine campaign, which ran from August 2020 through June 2023.
“Over the course of its existence, the Campaign came to serve as a critical vehicle for disseminating the Biden-Harris administration’s messaging on mask usage, social distancing, vaccine effectiveness, the risks COVID-19 posed to children, and how to reopen schools, businesses, and civil society,” the report says.
“Much of the scientific content directly featured in or alluded to in Campaign ads and other promotional material was drawn from CDC recommendations, guidance, and research, critical parts of which proved to be deeply flawed,” it adds.
The report explains, for example, that the campaign claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines were “highly effective against transmission,” a statement that later turned out to be false. “This ultimately had a negative impact on vaccine confidence and the CDC’s credibility when proven untrue,” the report says.
Listing other examples of its flawed messaging, the report calls out mask-wearing recommendations from former National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) head Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Fauci “advocated against mask wearing on February 5, 2020, stating ‘Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,’” the report says, going on to explain that similar comments were made by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC).
“The CDC had inconsistent and flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks,” the report asserts, noting that the agency has also “overstated the risk of COVID-19 to children” and “continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans ages six months and older, which has made the United States a global outlier in COVID-19 policy.”
“While the Biden-Harris administration’s public health guidance led to prolonged closures of schools and businesses, the NIH was spending nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money trying to manipulate Americans with advertisements—sometimes containing erroneous or unproven information,” Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said in a statement. “By overpromising what the COVID-19 vaccines could do—in direct contradiction of the FDA’s authorizations—and over emphasizing the virus’s risk to children and young adults, the Biden-Harris administration caused Americans to lose trust in the public health system. Our investigation also uncovered the extent to which public funding went to Big Tech companies to track and monitor Americans, underscoring the need for stronger online data privacy protections.”
"@HHSGov spent $911 million of taxpayer money on a massive COVID-19 vaccination promotion campaign that lied about masking, vaccines, and boosters—and 'consistently overstated' the risk of the virus to children, according to a shocking @HouseCommerce report."
— Energy and Commerce Committee (@HouseCommerce) October 23, 2024https://t.co/NrkUoc6wD3
