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Fauci relayed some of those messages to cable Sunday news broadcasts, including highlighting the idea that door-to-door vaccination efforts are an attempt to remove barriers to access and that 99.5 % of deaths from Covid concern unvaccinated people.
“This data kind of strikes you between the eyes,” Fauci said of the deaths.
Beyond Fauci, press secretary Jen Psaki fended off Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – a lawmaker she once said she didn’t mention on the podium – who compared the campaign administration to the Nazis. Jeff Zients, Director of Covid Response at the White House, berated Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who falsely claimed in a tweet that government ‘agents’ were going door to door to’ compel vaccination “.
Biden’s allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, also plan to more aggressively engage fact-checkers and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is being sent on social media and messages. text. The aim is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting vaccinated due to issues such as transportation see these barriers reduced or removed entirely.
“We are firmly committed to keeping politics out of efforts to vaccinate every American so that we can save lives and help our economy recover further,” White House spokesman Kevin Munoz said. “When we see deliberate efforts to spread disinformation, we see it as an obstacle to the public health of the country and we will not hesitate to call it out.”
Hindsight is a change in tone and approach from earlier this year, when the White House has often chosen to ignore its harshest conservative critics out of a desire not to elevate them. It is tacit recognition that the July 4 target of 70 percent nationwide immunization was overly optimistic, if not naive. And this underlines that two realities are taking hold: it is becoming more and more difficult to convince vaccine-skeptics to be vaccinated (out of the 10 least vaccinated states, all were won by Donald Trump in 2020) and the voices against -vaccines, already present in the country, are increasingly being incorporated by Republicans keen to oppose initiatives led by Biden.
Indeed, in recent weeks, criticism of the administration’s door-to-door vaccination strategy has become increasingly common on Fox News, in addition to being a prominent topic on conservative publications. on social networks and on SMS messages to mobile phone users. This comes at a time when the highly contagious Delta variant is triggering an increase in hospitalizations and infections in those who have not been vaccinated. Those knocking on the door are individuals like pastors or local organizers, not government bureaucrats. And they don’t deliver vaccines, but let people know where and how to get vaccinated, and why it’s important to get it. As long as people understand this, the White House argues, it could have a positive impact on increasing vaccinations.
That hasn’t stopped conservative media figures from distorting these efforts in strident, almost apocalyptic terms.
Charlie Kirk, the pro-Trump co-founder of conservative student organization Turning Point USA, told Fox last week that he was embarking on a “massive public relations campaign” around vaccination efforts, which he compared to an “apartheid style”. open-air hostage-taking. (The other founder of Turning Point, Bill Montgomery, died last year of complications from the coronavirus.)
Turning Point USA also sent text messages urging people to sign petitions on the subject. In a message, viewed by POLITICO, Kirk said: “Biden is sending DOOR-TO-DOOR thugs to get you to take a Covid-19 vaccine. Sign the petition for: No Medical Raids in America.
In an interview with Right Side Broadcasting at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Representative Madison Cawthorn (RN.C.) offered a different variety of false fear tactics, suggesting the administration would use door-to-door vaccination efforts. door-to-door as a means of “picking up your arms” and “your Bibles”.
The White House did not respond to Kirk or Cawthorn. But after Parson tweeted attacking the door-to-door approach, Zients went directly to the governor of Missouri.
“The organizations that fuel disinformation and try to distort this type of trusted messenger work, I think you are doing a disservice to the country and to the doctors, religious leaders, community leaders and others who are working to do so. vaccinate people, save lives and help end this pandemic, ”Zients said at a press conference last week.
Psaki offered a similar type of hindsight on Friday, when asked about South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster. lobby for the state health ministry to ban “door-to-door tactics in the state’s ongoing immunization efforts.”
Psaki said it was “a disservice to the country” to spread misinformation and that “the failure to provide accurate public health information, including the effectiveness of vaccines and their accessibility to people across the country , including South Carolina, is literally killing people, so maybe they should take that into account.
The press secretary also pointed out that the administration has been engaged, for months, with local community groups and pastors to manage the “door to door” sharing of information with neighbors on the vaccine.
One of those groups that the administration has partnered with on the ground is the COVID Collaborative, co-founded by former George W. Bush, John Bridgeland.
Bridgeland said her group had already seen a change on the ground with people shutting their doors “in their face because they didn’t want to be vaccinated.” His biggest concern is that these lies convince the communities [who] are already wary of vaccines, creating sects in the country where the virus only bounces among the unvaccinated. ”
“It’s completely illogical and it’s potentially a death sentence,” Bridgeland said, adding that he had seen the rhetoric escalate in recent weeks. “It’s coordinated by people who have platforms and have an interest in bringing down the current administration.”
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