Biden’s vaccine blame game | Washington Examiner

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After a promising start to the year, the White House has hit a wall on COVID-19 vaccinations and is looking for culprits to blame for the reasons many are reluctant to get vaccinated.

One of the first targets was Facebook and other social media platforms, where information and disinformation spread rapidly. “They’re killing people… look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated,” Biden told reporters as he left the White House on a trip to Camp David. “And they kill people.”

The comments sparked speculation over new government regulations aimed at slowing the sharing of anti-vaccine sentiment on social media. Facebook responded that when it comes to vaccination failures, Biden should look at himself in the mirror. “President Biden’s target was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason that target was missed,” a company vice president protested in a report. communicated.

Biden quickly clarified his position on Facebook, although the White House’s position on social media regulation related to COVID-19 remained unclear.

“Facebook doesn’t kill people, these 12 people are there to give out misinformation. Anyone who listens to it suffers. It kills people. This is bad news,” Biden said, apparently referring to a dozen accounts. which apparently have been spreading the most misinformation. “I hope Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation, outrageous misinformation about the vaccine. That’s what I was trying to say.

Next, Fox News, where some popular hosts have made skeptical statements about the safety of vaccines and the use of government power to mandate them. As was the case with Facebook, there have been reports of tense meetings between the White House and the cable news network.

After Fox aired segments encouraging people to get vaccinated, Biden began mocking the organization at a CNN town hall in Ohio. But if you noticed, as they say in this southern part of my state, they had an altar call, ”they told some of the guys as the mostly friendly audience laughed. All of a sudden they’re outside saying, let’s get vaccinated. Let’s get vaccinated.

The president then caught up. I shouldn’t be kidding, Biden said. It’s good. It’s good.

Although 339 million doses have been delivered and more than two-thirds of adults have received at least one injection, just under half of the public are fully vaccinated. The numbers are higher among the age groups at risk, with 81.3% of those 65 to 74 fully vaccinated and 77.4% of those 75 and over.

But stubborn pockets of resistance remain, especially in conservative rural white communities who voted for former President Donald Trump and black communities who vote majority Democrats. The vaccine has not yet been approved for children under 12, and less than 11% of people under 18 are fully immunized.

The first group received the most attention as the Biden administration came under scrutiny for not overcoming the vaccination bump. Some prominent conservative social media influencers have positioned themselves as vaccine skeptics, and even many on the right who reject this view have opposed the White House talks on policing on these technological platforms for disinformation based in part on the removal of the theory of origins from the Wuhan laboratory.

Even with a real anti-vaxxer presence online, some are seeing scapegoats from the administration. It would help if the FDA gave it its final approval, Republican strategist John Feehery said. I think Biden will face the same problem as Trump. He does not have full control of the situation. Many decision-makers at the local level are completely unqualified to make decisions, and yet it is they who are returning to pandemic panic.

The spread of the highly transmissible delta variant, albeit with a high-profile breakthrough infection from a vaccinated White House aide and a brief fright following Vice President Kamala Harriss’ exposure to COVID-19 during ‘a meeting with Texas Democrats undermined the perception that the pandemic is drawing to a close. The return of the mask mandates is under discussion. If the numbers continue to rise, it could halt the economic reopening that is producing record growth.

Biden continued to push the vaccines onto the masks. The promise to handle the pandemic better than Trump has been a winning question for him during the campaign, and he received high marks on the issue as president. A CBS News / YouGov poll gave him a 66% approval rating on his handling of the coronavirus, with 41% among conservatives.

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