Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said she experienced health complications from a COVID vaccine during a Wednesday hearing about alleged Twitter censorship.
The social media giant stifled the voices of medical experts who raised doubts about the prevailing narrative of the pandemic, Mace argued as she shared details about her own health.
In particular, 45-year-old Mace said she suffered side effects from a COVID vaccine jab, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has encouraged people to get to protect themselves from severe illness.
“I, along with many Americans, have long-term effects from COVID,” Mace said. “Not only was I a long-hauler, but I have effects from the vaccine. It wasn’t the first shot but it was a second shot.”
Mace said she developed asthma, tremors in her left hand, and occasional heart problems that doctors cannot explain.
Todays @GOPoversight hearing puts @twitter execs in the hot seat. Twitter has basically been a subsidiary of the FBI and other government agencies who successfully censored voices they disagreed with. Just cause. pic.twitter.com/KtTMzFHf0w
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) February 8, 2023
“I find it extremely alarming Twitter’s unfettered censorship spread into medical fields and affected millions of Americans by suppressing expert opinions from doctors and censoring those who disagree with the CDC,” Mace said.
“I have great regrets about getting the shot because of the health issues that I now have that I don’t think are ever going to go away,” she added. “And I know that I’m not the only American who has those kinds of concerns.”
To illustrate her argument, Mace put on display findings from the Twitter Files, which have revealed internal deliberations within Twitter about major decisions regarding censorship.
Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, she noted as one example, once tweeted an article he wrote about natural immunity. According to a Twitter Files disclosure, he was placed on a “Trends Blacklist.”
Mace presented a tweet about natural immunity among children from epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard Medical School professor, that ended up being flagged for misinformation. Even when a Twitter account with 18,000 followers shared data from the CDC, Mace said its tweet received a “misleading” label.
Former Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, one of the witnesses at the House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday, said Twitter enacted COVID policies meant to “protect individuals.” Mace pressed Gadde, getting her to testify she is not a doctor, leaving the congresswoman to question Twitter’s level of expertise.
Mace concluded Twitter “worked overtime to suppress accurate COVID information.”