House committee finds Biden-Harris admin spent $900 million on COVID propaganda

[Stone]

House committee finds Biden-Harris admin spent $900 million on COVID propaganda
Despite (or perhaps partially because of) the Biden administration's 'We Can Do This' promotional campaign for COVID vaccines and masks, public trust in the medical establishment continued to decline.



Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Oct 29, 2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted - not all hyperlinks included below]) – The Biden administration spent $900 million in taxpayer dollars to unsuccessfully sell COVID-19 vaccines and masking to the general public, according to a recently completed investigation by the Republican-led U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee.

The report, begun in April 2023 and released on October 23, sought to explore the failure of the administration’s “We Can Do This” messaging campaign to prevent public trust in the medical establishment from continuing to decline, as highlighted by a July 2023 study in the Annals of Medicine that found just 13.2% of children under five and 43.9% of youth ages 12-17 were vaccinated for COVID, and that even among those who were just under 40% of the younger group and 55.3% of those 12-17 were boosted.

The “(m)ain reasons for non-vaccination among reluctant parents were concerns about side effects (53.3%), lack of trust in COVID-19 vaccines (48.7%), the belief that children do not need a COVID-19 vaccine (38.8%), lack of trust in the government (35.6%), and that children in the household were not members of a high-risk group (32.8%),” that paper said.

The House GOP report found that “much of the scientific content” used by the campaign was based on data and advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and as such was “deeply flawed” on numerous critical points that exacerbated mistrust rather than allaying it. Among the medical misinformation it promoted were claims that the COVID vaccines effectively stopped COVID transmission, exaggerations of the effectiveness of masking, and exaggerations of the risk the virus posed to children, which in reality was almost nonexistent.

The campaign also relied on celebrities to cut advertisements promoting vaccination as well as full-time social media influencers to do the same directly to their audiences, with little success. It also worked to “regularly synthesize findings from Google search trends and monitor social listening tools (weekly reports, trackers) to recommend, develop, shepherd through clearance, and traffic a range of timely static and video ads (…) on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, Google, and Bing.” The report says it is “unclear whether personally identifiable information was in any way used by Google in the development of the Campaign for the custom search dashboard, and to what extent children’s viewing habits were involved in the Campaign.”

“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. By overpromising what the COVID-19 vaccines could do — in direct contradiction of the FDA’s authorizations — and over emphasizing the virus’ risk to children and young adults, the Biden-Harris administration caused Americans to lose trust in the public health system,” said the chair of the committee, Republican U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington said. “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.”

Reviewing the report on X, Stanford University infectious disease expert Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the nation’s most prominent critics of the COVID establishment, called it “devastating” to the CDC’s credibility.

He noted that the chief strategy adopted by Fors Marsh Group (FMG), the public relations firm hired for the campaign, was to exaggerate the risk of dying from COVID while downplaying the lack of evidence that the vaccines stopped transmission of the virus. To that end, the campaign continued to promote vaccine mandates even after the administration knew the shots available at the time were not effective against COVID’s Delta variant.

At the same time, the campaign sent mixed messaging that not only undermined its own message about the vaccines but also the government’s own guidance when it came to promoting other preferred measures. In March 2021, advertisements insisted on even vaccinated Americans continuing to wear masks at a time when the CDC itself was claiming vaccination rendered masking unnecessary.

Bhattacharya also noted that Dr. Ashish Jha, Biden’s own COVID adviser, “waited until December 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that ‘(t)here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.’ What took him so long?”

A large body of evidence has linked significant risks to the COVID vaccines, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.

The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 37,966 deaths, 218,241 hospitalizations, 21,952 heart attacks, and 28,641 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of October 4, among other ailments. U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published February in the journal Vaccine “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID vaccines, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines and offered several theories for a causal link.

In Florida, an ongoing grand jury investigation into the vaccines’ manufacturers is slated to release a highly anticipated report on the shots, and a lawsuit by the state of Kansas has been filed accusing Pfizer of misrepresentation for calling the shots “safe and effective.”

Forced masking in public was similarly found to be ineffective at best in limiting the spread of the virus. More than 170 studies have found that masks fail to stop COVID while instead being harmful, especially to children, who evidence finds face little-to-no-danger from COVID itself. By contrast, evidence suggests that the ability to see faces is critical for early development.