President Biden on Thursday dishonestly asserted that people who vaccinated against COVID-19 “cannot spread” the infection to other people.
The president was addressing in Elk Grove, Illinois, promoting his administration’s execution of vaccine mandates for federal workers and active-duty military and push to order big companies when he made the questionable comments.
“We have to beat this thing,” Biden said. “That’s why I’ve had to move toward requirements that everyone get vaccinated.”
“My administration is now requiring federal workers to be vaccinated. We’ve also required federal contractors to be vaccinated. If you have a contract with the federal government, working for the federal government, you have to be vaccinated,” he continued. “We’re requiring active duty military to be vaccinated.”
“We’re making sure health care workers are vaccinated,” he added. “Because if you seek care at a health care facility, you should have the certainty that the pro- — the people providing that care are protected from COVID and cannot spread it to you.”
Following the speech, conservative political and sports commentator Clay Travis posted a video of the president’s comments to Twitter raising doubt about his specific claims, in addition to other things.
“Joe Biden falsely says covid vaccinated people can’t spread the virus. That’s a lie,” Travis wrote. “Also he can’t even read off a teleprompter. This just keeps getting more embarrassing.”
The president’s comments are at odds with present conclusions drawn by his own government.
In its most recent guidance on the Delta variant, the U.S. CDC recognized that “fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others.”
The CDC’s direction is reflective of scientific studies which have shown that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people who test positive for COVID-19 infection carry a like amount of viral load, even if they have no symptoms.
Prior information promoted by the CDC may have proposed that wasn’t the situation, and so perhaps Biden was only emphasizing what he had heard previously. Yet, the CDC’s present direction was refreshed in August, which ought to have given the president a lot of time to consult the science.
While public health experts continue to say that COVID-19 vaccines are very powerful at preventing serious illness from the disease requiring hospitalization or causing death, it is simply not true that vaccinated people can’t spread the infection, particularly the Delta variant.
Established press outlets, in case they were keen on taking care of their responsibilities, ought to make it generally realized that the president’s decisions on this, as expressed, are off-base.
On the other hand, it’s not whenever that Biden first has made this deceptive case about vaccines absent a lot of complaint.