CDC, Biden Admin ‘Manipulated Americans’ with ‘Deeply Flawed’ COVID Messaging, ‘Overpromising’ Vaccines ‘Without Evidence,’ and ‘Misleading the Public’: House Energy & Commerce Committee

Investigation reveals public funding went to Big Tech companies to "track and monitor Americans," raising "need for stronger online data privacy protections."

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) portrait from McMorris.House.gov.

In a new report overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans have unveiled the “failings” of a $900 million COVID-19 public relations campaign.

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The committee wanted to know how the government’s response to the pandemic caused a “collapse of trust in public health messaging.”

The report is highly critical of the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and represents the culmination of the committee’s investigation launched in April 2023.

“Americans have been force fed a constant diet of Anthony Fauci propaganda since the onset of the pandemic,” members of the committee stated at the beginning of the investigation.

“Given previous scrutiny of much smaller sums spent on public relations consultants, we feel it is appropriate and necessary to investigate why NIH has spent nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer funds on these services since 2018. We have an obligation to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and ensure taxpayer dollars aren’t being spent to silence scientific debate or to promote personalities over effective public health campaigns. That requires a full accounting of every dollar spent.”

Now that the investigation is complete, the committee characterizes the CDC’s COVID recommendations, guidance, and research as “deeply flawed” and filled with “errors and failures.”

They contend the CDC’s guidance “went beyond the terms of FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to state” and determined “without evidence” that COVID shots were highly effective against transmission.

The CDC also had “inconsistent and flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks” and “consistently overstated the risk of COVID-19 to children.”

Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) accused Biden’s NIH (National Institutes of Health) of “trying to manipulate Americans” with messaging.

“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,” Representative Rodgers said in a press release.

The congresswoman charged the Biden admin with misleading the public regarding COVID injections and the risk the virus posed to younger Americans.

“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,” she said.

The committee’s investigation also uncovered the extent to which public funding went to Big Tech companies to “track and monitor Americans,” which Rep. Rodgers said underscored the “need for stronger online data privacy protections.”

Biden Admin’s $900M COVID Campaign ‘Misled the Public,’ Sowed Distrust, and ‘Crushed Local Economies’

Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) emphasized how the report uncovered the truth behind the Biden-Harris administration’s use of $900 million of taxpayer funds “to further their own political agenda that sowed distrust in our public health institutions, kept kids out of the classroom, and crushed local economies.”

“American trust in the CDC is at an all time low because the Biden-Harris administration’s flawed pandemic messaging, and this report is the first step in holding CDC and other agencies to account for the harms caused throughout the pandemic and ensure these institutions are operating openly and transparently with the American public during future pandemics,” he said.

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA) argued Biden and the CDC had no scientific basis for their messaging, which ultimately “misled the American public.”

“The entire premise of the Biden-Harris ‘Stop the Spread’ campaign was that if you got vaccinated for COVID-19, you could resume daily activities because they said vaccinated people would not spread the disease,” Rep. Griffith said.

“Despite lacking scientific basis, the administration bought into this CDC claim and misled the American public. As a result, vaccination coverage with other vaccines appears to have declined, I believe because of a growing distrust of information coming from our public health institutions.”

You can read the full report below:

We Can Do This Nih Pr Campaign Report Public 82616d81eb (1)

21.3MB ∙ PDF file

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Committee Recommendations

The Energy and Commerce Committee believes Americans “cannot afford another botched government response to a future pandemic.”

In order to prevent a recurrence of HHS’s “failures” and to “strengthen the nation’s public health preparedness system,” the committee made the following recommendations:

• “Congress should consider formally authorizing the CDC and clearly define the agency’s core mission.”

• “HHS and its agencies should abide by the FDA’s product labeling guidelines. HHS and its agencies should be barred from promoting information regarding an FDA-regulated product that does not reflect the FDA-approved label.”

• “Congress should consider clarifying responsibility for evaluating the safety of vaccines and streamline existing reporting systems for capturing vaccine injuries and adverse reactions.”

• “HHS and its agencies should embrace a culture of transparency and accountability.”

• “The CDC and federal public health officials should not attempt to silence dissenting scientific opinions.”

• “HHS and its agencies should overhaul their website archival process to mimic that of prior White House administrations.”

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