CDC Director Dings Hannity for “False” Vaccine Claim

With boosters and mandates coming, the administration pushes the case for shots.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky testifies in the Senate in May.Greg Nash/AP

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Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday that Fox News host Sean Hannity’s recent claim that COVID vaccines don’t protect some people is “false,” in an unusually direct effort to correct misleading information.

Hannity said on his show Thursday that “the science shows the vaccine will not necessarily protect you. It’s not protecting many people.” Asked to respond Friday by MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Walensky said that the “vast majority of people in this country who are getting infected with COVID, who are showing up in the hospital with COVID, and now who are dying with COVID are people who have not received this vaccine.”

She said she believes Hannity’s claim is false. “Even if you happen to be one of the breakthrough cases, your case will be far milder than if you didn’t have a vaccine,” Walensky said.

But the CDC director conceded that may be changing, citing data from abroad that indicates vaccine protection may decline. “We are starting to see evidence of reduced protection against mild and moderate disease,” Walensky, along with other health officials said in an August 18 statement announcing a plan to administer booster shots. “Based on our latest assessment, the current protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death could diminish in the months ahead.”

Walensky and other health officials face the challenge of convincing unvaccinated people to get shots while also explaining the need for boosters. While people like Hannity can cite breakthrough cases to misleadingly dismiss the value of getting vaccinated at all, public health officials make a more complicated, though perfectly logical, argument: Vaccines provide protection against COVID, especially severe outcomes and death. But that protection may diminish over time. 

This exchange comes as more public and private organizations are enforcing vaccine mandates. The University of Virginia on Friday announced that it had “unenrolled” 238 students for failure to comply with the school’s vaccine mandate.

Many more mandates are likely to come after the Food and Drug Administration’s expected approval of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine next week. Moderna’s application for full approval for its vaccine is expected to come “at least several weeks” later, according to the New York Times. Still, the Pfizer approval alone will probably offer a green light for public and private organizations that held off on mandates pending an FDA approval. The Pentagon, for instance, is expected to cite the approval in requiring about 1.3 million active-duty troop to get vaccines.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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