In the United States, “the House report on HHS Covid propaganda is damning” according to Jay Bhattacharya

Pixabay

In a long post published on X, Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine and Economics at Stanford dissects the House of Representatives report on the public health campaign on COVID- 19 of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the United States, and according to him, it is damning.

He mentions the expenses of the Biden administration spent nearly $1 billion to spread partial or false information about vaccines, boosters and masks to Americans. “If a private company had run this campaign, they would have been heavily penalized,” Jay said. It was a public relations agency, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), which was commissioned for this communication campaign, a campaign which according to it amounts to propaganda, with the main objective of increasing the vaccination rate against Covid.

What strategy was put in place to increase this rate ?

– Exaggerating the risk of mortality due to Covid.

– Minimizing the fact that there was no tangible evidence showing that the vaccine prevented transmission, as well as exaggerating the effectiveness of masks, promoting social distancing and closing schools.

The agency (FMG) mainly drew its erroneous information from the “guidelines” of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), which did not have the conclusions of the FDA about the limitations of the vaccine, moreover ignoring certain scientific results from other countries that contradicted the advice of the CDC.

This report details the CDC's flip-flopping on masks. Jay Bhattacharya points out the CDC's anti-scientific and inhumane stance on cloth masks for toddlers through 2022.

Jay Bhattacharya brings up several points in the report:

• President Biden's Covid advisor Ashish Jha waited until December 2022 (right after he left office) to tell the American people that there was “no study in the world that shows masks work as well.”
• In 2021, former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky rewrote the CDC’s social distancing guidelines at the request of the National Teachers Union, ensuring that schools would remain closed to instruction for extended periods. Meanwhile, FMG ran ads explaining that schools would remain closed unless children wore masks, avoided friends, and got vaccinated against.
• In March 2021, as the CDC explained that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks, the agency ran ads claiming that masks were still required, including for vaccinated people. “Now is not the time to let up,” they said, without any evidence of benefit.
• In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for mandatory vaccination, the PR agency spread false information that the vaccine prevented transmission. When people started getting covid after they had just been vaccinated, Americans’ trust in public health plummeted.
• Later, when the FDA approved the vaccine for children ages 12 to 15, the agency told parents that schools could reopen in the fall of 2021 only if their children were vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects, such as vaccine-related myocarditis. HHS removed the ads from that era from its websites. They essentially told children to view other children as biohazards unless they were vaccinated.
• When the Delta variant emerged, the agency doubled down, once again relying on fear to encourage mask-wearing and social distancing.
• In September 2021, CDC Director Walensky overrode the advice of the agency’s outside experts to recommend booster shots for all adults, not just seniors. The move was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval, which was limited to seniors.
• The public relations campaign and the CDC have consistently overstated the risk of COVID-19 mortality in children to scare parents into getting them vaccinated.
• In August 2021, the military mandated COVID-19 vaccinations, leading to the furlough of 8,300 service members. Since 2023, the Department of Defense has been trying to reinstate discharged service members.
• In addition to the military, the Biden/Harris administration pushed for this vaccine mandate with other government agencies (OSHA, CMS), even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant was evading vaccine immunity. The PR campaign carefully avoided informing Americans about the decline in vaccine effectiveness against variants.
• The influence campaign featured celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get vaccinated. “I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a defective product, they should be partly liable if that product causes harm,” Bhattacharya said.
• In the absence of evidence, the campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their children from developing long Covid.

The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC's core mission to focus on disease prevention, requiring HHS communications to follow FDA product labeling rules, and overhauling the process for evaluating vaccine safety.

The most important recommendation, according to Jay, is that “HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in order to create the illusion of consensus in favor of CDC advice.” He concludes that “HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope that public health can regain the trust of Americans.”

A full copy of the House report can be downloaded here. 

ALSO READ

Freedom of expression has never been more important and in danger. It is everyone's duty to make it their business – Debriefing with Jay Bhattacharya DEBRIEFING – Jay Bhattacharya, physician and economist, is a professor at the famous Californian university of Stanford. In October 2020, he spoke out against the management of… December 18, 2023 – 5:00 PM Society “Trust in public health is at the lowest level I have ever seen,” Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine and economics INTERVIEW – Holder of a doctorate in economics, Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine and economics at the prestigious American university of Stanford, in Cali… March 20, 2023 – 5:46 PM Videos

You liked the article ? It mobilized our editorial staff, which lives only on your donations.
Information has a cost, especially since competition from subsidized editorial staff requires greater rigor and professionalism.

With your support, France-Soir will continue to offer its articles for free  because we believe that everyone should have access to free and independent information to form their own opinion.

You are the sine qua non condition for our existence, support us so that France-Soir remains the French media that allows the most legitimate voices to be expressed.