COVID misinformation in mainstream media, e.g., Carlson (Fox News) vs. CDC (Washington Post) ... #3

Last update: Sunday 10/23/22 

Donald Trump's exile from Twitter elevated Tucker Carlson to the GOP's "Mississippi Throne".  As the new  "father of lies", Mr. Carlson never closes the floodgates. His lies are usually whoppers, blatant unapologetic distortions of the truth. But he recently showed unexpected cunning by a tweet and his subsequent release of a video clip that, had either come from Joe Sixpack, would have gone unnoticed by the liberal/progressive mainstream media or, at most, shrugged off as an understandable misunderstanding. But coming from Carlson, the mainstream took the bait, so his tweet and video quickly exploded from viral to maga viral. 

He said, the CDC said ... 

Here's a link to the the three minute clip in which Carlson repeated his earlier tweet that the CDC was about to add the Covid vaccine to children's immunization requirements, which would make Covid vaccination a mandatory prerequisite for them to attend school. His declaration was literally false

• "COVID-19 vaccine requirement for children would be 'the first' with no clinical data: Dr. Marty Makary", Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News, 10/18/22
  
  -- Carlson allowed Dr. Makary (Johns Hopkins University) to speak for more than two of the clip's three minutes. The doctor had two points: First, the vaccines have not gone through clinical trials, and second, this is the first children's vaccine that has not been proven safe for children by clinical trials
  
  -- Dr. Makary asserted with considerable frustration that when Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-⁠19 Response Coordinator, was asked about the data that was used to justify the CDC's recommendation, Dr. Jha had replied that he has seen the data but it's not public information. "What are they hiding? Why can't we see this information? Instead we're basically seeing this intense paternalism to really just do as we say and stop asking questions."
  
  -- Dr. Makary concluded by declaring that "If the CDC decides to put this on their routine vaccine schedule, it will be up to states and that's where I think parents have a right to say let's see some clinical data before we force this as a requirement for school."
  

On Thursday 10/19/22, the CDC tweeted a no-frills rebuttal to Carlson's false statement on the video, a tweet that included a copy of the clip:

• "Thursday, CDC's independent advisory committee (ACIP) will vote on an updated childhood immunization schedule. States establish vaccine requirements for school children, not ACIP or CDC. More: https://bit.ly/3eH64xI."
  
  -- The link leads to a CDC page titled "State Vaccination Requirements" that bluntly affirms that "State laws establish vaccination requirements for school children."|
  
  -- The tweet did not refute Dr. Makary's assertion about a lack of clinical trials, nor did it provide a link to a plausible rationale for why clinical trials were unnecessary.
  
  -- Strictly speaking, the CDC's rebuttal did not demolish Carlson's point. His assertion would have been true for any state whose laws required that its agencies regard CDC recommendations as mandates to be implemented asap ... but no state has officially abdicated its vaccination powers to the CDC. Perhaps the cunning Mr. Carlson did not know this ... LOL, ROTF, LMFAO!!!
  
  -- However, it is almost certain that most of his regular Fox News viewers did not know this ... nor care, given their likely far greater concern about the safety of vaccines for their kids that did not undergo clinical trials, no matter who required them.

So here's the bottom line. Carlson set a bait and switch trap by falsely tweeting that the CDC's recommendations were binding mandates, whereas they are officially just recommendations to the states. Of course, Carlson might shrug that the CDC's recommendations are de facto mandates, because most states have tended to adhere to the CDC's recommendations .... until recently. 

In the video Carlson switched to far more lethal charges by devoting most of the video to enabling a credentialed guest to accuse the CDC of making potentially dangerous recommendations that did not meet the traditional gold standard, i.e., proving safety and effectiveness in clinical trials. 

Indeed, Dr. Makary charged the White House COVID-⁠19 Response Coordinator with "paternalism" because of the Coordinator's refusal to share whatever data was used to justify the CDC's recommendation. Dr. Makary did not suggest that the data did not exist. However, the CDC's failure to respond to his challenge implies two kinds of misinformation (a) the data doesn't exist or (b) the data might be regarded as insufficient by many experts. Either possibility embodies a monumental unforced blunder by the CDC.

He said, they said ... 
Now for the high voltage response from the CDC's defenders, as reported by the Washington Post.

• "False claim that CDC would require covid vaccines for kids goes viral", Dan Diamond and Lena H. Sun, Washington Post, 10/19/22

Whereas the CDC's tweet was a low key rebuttal to Carlson's lie, the outraged responses from the CDC's defenders in the Post article entombed the lie in thick layers of misinformation. For example:

• "Public health experts said there is a legitimate debate over whether schoolchildren should be required to be vaccinated against the coronavirus — but the incendiary and erroneous claim by the Fox News personalities is the latest example of how critics can twist the facts about the CDC and the coronavirus, potentially contributing to lower vaccination rates, fading trust in federal health officials and other consequences for public health."
  

Wow!!! These unnamed "Public health experts" also fell into Carlson's trap. Instead of providing concerned parents with a plausible rationale for how a vaccine that had not undergone clinical trials could nevertheless protect their children, they drew their wagons into a protective circle ... around the CDC!!! ... :-(

This gross insensitivity to the public's deepest concerns is the kind of monumental unforced blunder that the mainstream media has made throughout the pandemic. Readers should recall that in 2020 the mainstream blamed the CDC's shortfalls on President Trump. Now they want to blame them on Tucker Carlson, the cunning shadow of a shade.

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Links to related notes on this blog :  

• "COVID misinformation in mainstream media's predictions that China's pivot from Zero COVID will fail ... #4", Last update: 12/17/22
• "COVID misinformation in mainstream media, e.g., The NY Times ... #3", Last update: 9/19/22
• "COVID misinformation ... #1", Last update: 8/4/22