A lot of us have talked until we’re blue in the face about the inconsistent “trust the science” coronavirus messaging that has come out of Biden White House, which actually started well before President Biden was inaugurated.
For starters, there was the despicable undermining of the public’s confidence in the vaccine from both Biden, his then-vice presidential running mate Kamala Harris, and many in the media last year in what was a clear attempt at hurting Trump’s chances for reelection.
What made their campaign to sow doubt about the vaccine especially obvious was that after the election when they were projected the winners, all of a sudden the vaccine was safe and they were starting “public awareness” campaigns — with much help from the same media that undercut it pre-election — to encourage people to take the vaccine so we could begin to get back to normal.
There has also been confusion as to what constitutes “getting back to normal,” confusion that was enabled by the White House’s ongoing conflicting messages as to what “normal” meant and when exactly it would start happening.
With all of that in mind, let’s turn to the unintentionally revealing segment between CNN “Prime Time” host Chris Cuomo and White House senior COVID response advisor Andy Slavitt from Tuesday night, where they discussed the CDC’s updated guidelines on outdoor mask wearing for people who had been fully vaccinated.
Now, I know some of you may understandably be thinking “but Sister T., how are we supposed to get any truth from a discredited clown like Chris Cuomo?” Well, the answer is not so much in what Cuomo said, but what Slavitt would not say in response to Cuomo’s questions.
Watch below as Cuomo asks Slavitt four different times why can’t the CDC’s/White House’s messaging simply be that vaccinated people can get back to normal, no masks, no social distancing indoors or outdoors? It could, Cuomo argued, be a great way to discourage vaccine hesitancy and hasten the country’s return back to business as usual.
Slavitt never directly answered the question. Instead there was much obfuscating. Watch and see for yourselves (here’s the transcript as well):
.@ChrisCuomo asks @ASlavitt four times why vaccinated Americans can’t simply go back to normal life. Slavitt talks for many minutes but is never able to offer an answer. pic.twitter.com/2CDjAXL9xq
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 28, 2021
That segment, in a nutshell, revealed the entire problem with the public health messaging on coronavirus guidelines and vaccinations. Here we had a doctor and former Obama Medicare official who ran with the “trust the science, trust the CDC!” arguments all of last year not being able to explain the science behind the CDC’s guidelines on mask-wearing for fully vaccinated people. This guy is supposed to be a trusted “medical expert.” So, where was the expertise?
The back and forth exchange had people wondering as to why Slavitt couldn’t better explain why the CDC wasn’t going whole hog in encouraging vaccinated Americans to get back to normal:
Because they’re not done leveraging this for their own means. https://t.co/ySj7m8BypV
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 28, 2021
Vaccine demand is dropping, particularly among the young and among minorities. To reverse this, we should tell people they can go back to normal if they get vaccinated. This is precisely what Biden refuses to do, because continuing covid panic is his lever for change.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 28, 2021
While opinions may vary on the above speculations, it’s hard to disagree with these two:
When Chris Cuomo holds someone on the left to the fire, and they can’t hold up to his scrutiny, it is time to evaluate the position. https://t.co/pYpUB37CFc
— Greg Borchers (@GregBorchers) April 28, 2021
Oh boy. When you’ve lost Chris Cuomo, you know your messaging has hit rock bottom… https://t.co/P4A85YOMZc
— Angry Optimist (@subsix848) April 28, 2021
Indeed.
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