CDC Director Did Not Say Vaccines Are Failing
The Claim
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted vaccines aren’t working.
News posted on
Emerging story
The claim was originally posted to Natural News, a site that frequently publishes conspiracy-pseudoscience claims, according to Media Bias Fact Check, a tool that measures credibility among various outlets. Social media users then shared it across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in the first few days of August. One Instagram post got more than 6,600 likes.
Misbar’s Analysis
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky did not publicly say that vaccines against the coronavirus are failing. The writer behind the Natural News post, Mike Adams, does not present any quotes related to vaccines failing that are attributed directly to Walensky. Rather, Adams seems to have taken much liberty and mischaracterized CDC concerns about the coronavirus.
In July, the Washington Post published a report that referenced an internal document from the CDC that found “vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated.” The document also said that “vaccinated people infected with delta have measurable viral loads similar to those who are unvaccinated and infected with the variant,” according to the Post.
In his Natural News article, Adams, however, wrote that “vaccinated people may now carry higher viral loads than unvaccinated people, contributing to the spread of covid,” attributing that information to the CDC and attaching his own inaccurate analysis that’s exaggerated and not comparable to the actual language used by the Washington Post, to sum up, the document.
Health officials are continuously updating guidelines in response to the emergence of COVID-19 variants. The CDC has, for example, recently recommended vaccinated individuals to wear face masks once again. But this and other emerging information about the coronavirus does not mean vaccines are failing. In fact, federal health agencies — including the CDC — have been urging the public to get fully vaccinated for months.
In that same article, Adams writes that the CDC is “hiding” data from the public, but does not explain what makes him believe this, or provide any evidence to support this claim.
