The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report Wednesday criticizing the Biden-Harris Administration for spending nearly $1 billion on COVID-era messaging that was often inaccurate or misleading.
The report examines how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services allocated $900 million in taxpayer funds for public health campaigns during the pandemic. It highlights “errors and failures” in the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) “We Can Do This” campaign, which promoted information about vaccines, the risks to children, masks, and more. Much of this information was later proven incorrect. For example, the report criticizes the CDC for initially claiming that COVID-19 vaccines would prevent infection, which turned out to be false. This, the committee argues, undermined public trust in vaccines and the CDC.
“Americans cannot afford another botched government response to a future pandemic,” the report stated.
“This ultimately had a negative impact on vaccine confidence and the CDC’s credibility when proven untrue,” the report stated.
The report also pointed to the shifting guidance on mask usage. It notes that Dr. Anthony Fauci, then head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), initially discouraged mask-wearing in early 2020, only for the CDC to reverse course by April 2020, recommending masks for all. The report further cites former White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Jha’s 2022 statement that there was no clear evidence that masks were highly effective.
“The CDC had inconsistent and flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks,” the report noted, adding that the agency also exaggerated the risks of COVID-19 to children.
The report criticizes the CDC’s continued recommendation of COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months, which the committee described as an outlier globally.
This marketing, the report argues, provided justification for prolonged lockdowns and school closures, which have had lasting negative impacts on the economy and student learning. Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., stated that the Biden-Harris administration spent nearly $1 billion “trying to manipulate Americans with advertisements—sometimes containing erroneous or unproven information.”
By “overpromising” on the vaccine’s effectiveness and exaggerating the risks to young people, McMorris Rodgers said, the administration damaged public trust in health institutions.
The report also noted that federal health agencies pressured social media platforms to censor posts that challenged the government’s COVID messaging. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret earlier this year over complying with these federal requests.
“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,” McMorris Rodgers added.
Lawmakers concluded that the federal government’s dissemination of incorrect data has contributed to a growing distrust in vaccines and public health agencies. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith, R-Va., stated, “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.”
This, Griffith said, was misleading, and the resulting decline in trust has affected vaccination rates more broadly. A Gallup poll from August indicated that fewer Americans now view childhood vaccines as critical, with only 40% believing they are extremely important, down from 58% in 2019.
Read the report here.
