All available evidence — both from test studies and real-world usage — indicates that the COVID-19 vaccines being administered in the United States are both safe and effective. According to the CDC, “Over 109 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through March 15, 2021,” and “COVID-19 vaccines were evaluated in tens of thousands of participants in clinical trials,” with the vaccines meeting the “FDA’s rigorous scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization (EUA).”
Despite the safety and efficacy of the vaccine — demonstrated by nations like Israel whose vaccine program has been hugely successful — there is some level of skepticism in the United States when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Now, this reality is being actively manipulated into a partisan tool of attack against conservatives by the legacy media. CNN’s Brian Stelter decried “right-wing media personalities” who say “they’re merely asking questions, when they are really sowing doubts.”
Earlier that day, Stelter shared a link to an LA Times column titled, “Half of Republican men say they don’t want the vaccine. They’re mooching off the rest of us.”
The column cites a recent NPR/PBS/Marist poll, saying that “fully 49% of Republican men said they do not plan to get vaccinated — a higher share of refusers than any other demographic group. Among Democratic men, the number saying no was only 6%.”
The column continues, claiming that this finding has “confounded public health professionals.”
“‘We’ve never seen an epidemic that was polarized politically before,’ Robert J. Blendon, a health policy scholar at Harvard, told me,” the column reads.
“For months, Blendon and his colleagues expected ‘vaccine hesitancy’ to be a problem mainly among African Americans, whose history has been marked by neglect and abuse by medical authorities. But Black Americans, after some initial hesitance, now say they want the vaccine at the same rate that white people do,” Doyle McManus writes. “Republicans, on the other hand, have become more resistant — especially since a Democrat became president.”
In order for Democrats and the Leftist legacy media to pivot to present “conservative” media as the ideological enemy they hope to use as a replacement for Trump, they are relying on one defining factor: that the behavior of Democrats while Trump was in office will continue to remain hidden.
After all, throughout the pandemic, high-ranking members of the Democratic Party ignored their supposedly “pro-science” positions and openly questioned the legitimacy of a vaccine. That is, until Trump left office.
Kamala Harris
In early September, Kamala Harris spoke with CNN’s Dana Bash. During the interview, she implied that the approval and safety of a COVID-19 vaccine would be directly impacted by Trump. Harris claimed — without evidence — that “public health experts and scientists” would be “muzzled,” “suppressed,” and “sidelined.”
BASH: “Let's just say there is a vaccine that is approved and even distributed before the election. Would you get it?"
HARRIS: “I would not trust Donald Trump… I will not take his word for it."pic.twitter.com/7NIp1F8WkB
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 5, 2020
Harris’ argument was that Trump was “looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days and he’s grasping for whatever he can get to pretend that he has been a leader on this issue.”
When asked by Bash if she would get the vaccine if it was approved, Harris grinned and said “I would not trust Donald Trump.”
During their Vice Presidential debate in October, Mike Pence condemned Harris’ political tactics as “unconscionable,” asking her to “stop playing politics with people’s lives.”
Joe Biden
During his campaign, Joe Biden also sowed doubts about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, asking audience members, “who’s going to take the shot?”
He continued, asking, “you going to be the first one to say ‘put me, sign me up, they now say it’s OK?’” He even confirmed the seriousness of his question, adding, “I’m not being facetious.”
Joe Biden is ignoring Dr. Fauci and other experts and deliberately trying to undermine confidence in the coronavirus vaccine here.
Legit question from this: does Biden believe Americans shouldn't get the vaccine when its ready? pic.twitter.com/AgEGQeL3UE
— Andrew Clark (@AndrewHClark) September 4, 2020
Later in September, Biden appeared to walk back his argument, mimicking Harris’ strategy of sowing distrust by conflating the supposed trustworthiness of President Trump with the legitimacy of the vaccine. “I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump,” he said.
Andrew Cuomo
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has come under significant fire for his administration’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, appeared to actively encourage his constituents to distrust the federal government on the subject of vaccine safety.
“Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion,” Cuomo said, “and I wouldn’t recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government’s opinion.”
The governor also said that New York state would have its own health officials screen any federally approved vaccine before its use.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he doesn't ‘trust the federal government's opinion’ on a safe COVID-19 vaccine, so New York State will set up a task force to conduct an independent review https://t.co/A8IjlEIZby pic.twitter.com/BeMtj8oTwW
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 24, 2020
Nancy Pelosi
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also sowed distrust, justifying doubts regarding the legitimacy of a vaccine by calling for additional approval by “independent” committees.
“Unless there is confidence that the vaccine has gone through the clinical trials, and then is approved by the independent scientific advisory committee, as established to do just this, there will be doubts that people will have.”
She also fueled the issue of vaccine skepticism when she claimed — without evidence — that the United States may approve a vaccine simply because the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had done so.
“My concern is that the UK’s system for that kind of judgment is not on a par with ours in the United States. So if Boris Johnson decides he is going to approve a drug and this president embraces that, that is a concern that I have.”
***
Not only did these high-level Democrats promote what is arguably anti-vaccine propaganda while Trump was in office, there was evidence of vaccine skepticism among the American Left which was not met with derision and scorn by the legacy media. For example, according to an Economist/YouGov poll from November 2020, it was actually Democrats who were 30% “more likely than Republicans to be worried about the speed of vaccine development (90% vs 60%).” Not only that, between the month of July and November, “Democrats’ desire to get vaccinated for COVID-19 dropped from 60% to 43%.”
Ian Haworth is host of The Ian Haworth Show and The Truth in 60 Seconds. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.