Politifact Attempts to Rescue Dr. Birx

Scott Morefield
brownstone.org

Scott Morefield spent three years as a media & politics reporter with the Daily Caller, another two years with BizPac Review, and has been a weekly columnist at Townhall since 2018.

Just when you think you’ve caught them in a lie so big that even they can’t squirm their way out of it, the Covid Media Complex inevitably finds a way to muddy the waters enough to keep their narrative going. Such was the case when Dr. Deborah Birx said earlier this month that she was aware early on that the Covid vaccines “were not going to protect against infection.” She also, while claiming they still protect against severe illness and death, astonishingly admitted that the vaccines had been “overplayed” in the fight against Covid.

Here’s the relevant quote:

“I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection,” Birx told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. “And I think we overplayed the vaccines, and it made people then worry that it’s not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization. It will. But let’s be very clear: 50% of the people who died from the Omicron surge were older, vaccinated.”

I watched this interview live and, spotting the obvious ramifications, clipped and posted it immediately in what quickly became a viral tweet. As you can clearly see, I didn’t take her out of context, nor did I even offer any commentary or criticism. The clip received well over a million views and was shared, liked, and/or commented on by many prominent conservative media voices. Needless to say, the scarf queen was dunked on more than even she was accustomed to being dunked on (and given our love of dunking on Dr. Birx, that’s saying something).

So naturally, it was just a matter of time before the fact-checkers gave it a look to see if they could rescue Birx and get their narrative back on track. Enter Yacob Reyes at Politifact, who posted his defence of Birx on Friday. Interestingly, instead of using my tweet, Reyes cited a “viral Facebook post” which stated that the former White House coronavirus task force member “changed her story” on vaccines to set up his strawman.

And oh what a strawman this was. This “viral Facebook post” has, as of Saturday, all of 1,600 likes and 933 shares. “WARNING US DNA under threat!; Dr Brix changes tune on vax; FBI Huawei interferes with US military,” the caption read, going directly into the realm of conspiracy theory and even misspelling Birx’s name entirely.

Now, if this fact-checker had wanted to cite the most glaring example of a viral social media post that had been commented upon by thousands upon thousands of people, including several big-name conservative pundits, it stands to reason that he would have used my tweet. But he didn’t, instead choosing a semi-obscure Facebook post warning us about “DNA under threat!” Why? Because, obviously, choosing my post wouldn’t have given him anything to easily refute.

“A look at Birx’s full statements on Fox and an examination of her prior comments about the vaccines show she neither changed her tune nor admitted that the vaccines ‘don’t work,’” Reyes wrote before citing several examples of her being “largely consistent” on the matter of whether or not the vaccines protect against infection.

Indeed, Dr. Birx seems to have been fairly consistent in never explicitly claiming that the Covid vaccines would stop transmission or contraction of the virus. In this, Politifact is technically correct. However, despite being correct, they miss the entire point of the right’s criticisms, which is that the bulk of the Covidian medical establishment, from Joe Biden to Anthony Fauci to Rochelle Walensky, were all claiming that exact thing in 2021. To wit:

“You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” Biden told a CNN town hall on July 21, 2021, one year before the quadruple-vaccinated president actually caught Covid.

“Vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” CDC chief Rochelle Walensky said in March 2021.

“When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health and that of the family but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told CBS’s “Face the Nation” in May 2021. “In other words, you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere. And that’s when you get a point that you have a markedly diminished rate of infection in the community.”

So yes, Birx was correct. If those aren’t examples of the vaccines being “overplayed,” I don’t know what would be. But that was our POINT, that even absent Birx the bulk of the Covidian establishment was not just falsely claiming that Covid vaccines stopped transmission and spread, but also using that claim as a bludgeon to push through vaccine mandates in as many places as they could legally get away with them.

The real question here is, if Dr. Deborah Birx – a prominent member of Trump’s White House coronavirus task force – knew the vaccines didn’t stop infection then, how could the others NOT have known? And if they did, why did they lie about it for so long? Sure, we know the likely answer, but it’ll still be fun to watch them squirm on the stand as the investigations commence.

Reprinted from Townhall