Biden admin sought medical advice before mandating the vaccine—and then ignored it
The Biden administration sought advice from medical experts before mandating the experimental mRNA vaccine, which it then ignored because it was too logistically challenging, according to a Daily Caller report.
On October 12, 2021, White House officials held a 30-minute Zoom call with four experts to discuss implementing a vaccine mandate for roughly 100 million Americans. They included Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education Center Director Paul Offit, Yale University School of Medicine Professor Akiko Iwasaki, University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, and Baylor College of Medicine Professor Peter Hotez. The White House officials on the call were National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins.
Offit, Iwasaki, and Osterholm advocated that a prior COVID-19 infection should count toward a vaccination status. The latter two said that a prior infection should count as a single vaccine dose, while Offit said that a prior infection should be an exemption from a vaccine mandate.
“People were angry that they were mandated to take a vaccine despite having been naturally infected. They were saying ‘I’m protected, why am I being forced to get this to go out in public?’ And that was true, frankly, you were protected against severe disease,” Offit said.
Yet because such a policy would pose logistical challenges and entail bureaucratic hurdles, the Biden administration decided to ignore the specialists and simply mandate two doses for all Americans.
“The question was, bureaucratically, would it work if people can go on the Internet and just say ‘look I’ve been naturally infected’ and get out of it? It became more of a bureaucratic issue,” Offit said in an interview.
Public health officials like Fauci and Walensky did not mention the bureaucratic hurdles to the public. Instead, they emphasized vaccine immunity over natural immunity even though research shows that the latter trumps the former.
Mask mandate was based on polling
The vaccine mandate was not the only decree that ignored science. The Biden administration’s mandate forcing school children to wear masks was based on poll data, according to documents unearthed by America First Legal (AFL).
On August 10, 2021, top Biden administration officials received an email from Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). KFF is a dark money organization in Washington, D.C. funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Twitter, Google, Facebook and Poynter, among others. Altman’s email was addressed to Walensky, Fauci, Murthy, then-White House Vaccinations Coordinator Dr. Bechara Choucair, then-White House COVID-19 Response Team Senior Advisor Andy Slavitt, then-White House COVID-19 Response Team Chief Science Officer David Kessler, and then-White House COVID-19 Response Team Senior Advisor Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who was also the chairwoman of something called the COVID-19 Equity Task Force.
In the email, Altman shared select data from a KFF poll which showed that masking children was popular among Democrats.
“Hi folks, this is our Monitor Report on kids, parents and schools as promised,” began Altman. “We have the scoop on the issue of the moment, masks in schools. A very solid majority favor school masking requirements (63%), with 36% opposing. That 36% is made up of the usual suspects and of course is large enough to make some trouble in parts of the country and generate news.”
Altman went on to say that “asking unvaccinated students/staff to wear masks in school” was even “more broadly popular than vaccine mandates,” and again dismissed opposition to school mask mandates as a “political winner” only among conservatives.
“Prohibitions against schools wearing masks (which seven states now have, may only be a political winner in deep-red communities.”
Altman also recommended that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy “rally pediatricians in a campaign” to get parents to inject their children, citing data that pediatricians remain the most trusted source for parents.
“And concerns about long term impacts on fertility,” continued Altman, “remain an issue to go after and can be a target as you hammer misinformation.”
Three days later, the CDC recommended universal masking for all children two and up.
