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Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to school CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on vaccines. Here’s what happened.
Greene repeatedly mischaracterized reports from the CDC's and FDA's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, making false claims regarding how many people died and suffered side effects due to the vaccine.
In what is likely to be her last appearance before Congress, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky sparred with lawmakers, including Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Tuesday during a select subcommittee hearing on the coronavirus pandemic.
Walensky — the former infectious diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital who announced her resignation from the CDC in early May — sat before congress for the two-hour hearing, taking questions on the federal government’s performance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Questions ranged from the success of vaccines to limit disease transmission to the spread of misinformation surrounding the virus. And while Walensky appeared in-large-part unfazed by Republican criticism, an exchange between the CDC director and Greene during the hearing stood out as particularly testy.
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“I’d be happy to have our staff educate your staff,” Walensky said after being questioned by Greene.
Greene spent about six minutes critiquing Walensky’s tenure helming the centers, but repeatedly mischaracterized documented details regarding the CDC’s funding of vaccine manufacturers and the organization’s continued push to mandate vaccines while some reported averse effects.
“I don’t want my staff educated,” Greene responded. “You should educate the American people about what you’ve done.”
During her questioning, Greene misrepresented data from the CDC’s and U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
“We heard you say today that the COVID-19 vaccines are ‘safe and effective,’ but what I’d like to talk about with today is the 1.5 million VAERS reports that also reported 35,000 deaths associated with the COVID-19 vaccine,” Greene said. “And this has been what many Americans feel like is a largely ignored issue; they feel like the CDC has completely ignored the reports; they feel like you, as the CDC director, have completely ignored their reports.”
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However, Greene’s statement — that 35,000 people died and 1.5 million people reported adverse effects after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine — is a misrepresentation of the VAERS data she is citing, Walensky pointed out. VAERS collects all data on any symptoms or deaths that occur after someone receives a vaccine, and the database does not indicate a causation between the vaccine and the symptoms.
“The number of reports alone cannot be interpreted as evidence of a causal association between a vaccine and an adverse event, or as evidence about the existence, severity, frequency, or rates of problems associated with vaccines,” according to a disclaimer on the VAERS website.
And Walensky made this distinction clear in a response to Greene’s questioning.
“[VAERS] is intended for any person who has gotten a vaccine if they have an untoward event after the vaccine, whether or not it is related to the vaccine they report,” Walensky said. “It is intended to have an overreporting.”
“If you got hit by a truck after you got your vaccine, that was reported to [VAERS],” she added.
Greene also asked Walensky about the government’s funding of vaccine manufacturers, but Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services oversaw the purchases of COVID vaccines, not the CDC.
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“CDC is not responsible for the purchase of vaccines, so I cannot speak to all the economics that you spoke to,” Walensky said.
After discussing how Walensky encouraged pregnant people to receive the vaccine in August 2021, Greene called out the CDC for ignoring “the amount of miscarriages and stillbirths that increased drastically due to your advice to get vaccinated.”
But there exists no evidence that vaccines caused increases in stillbirths and miscarriages, according to studies published in the National Library of Medicine.
Greene’s statements took place in what is likely Walensky’s last appearance before congress. Walensky was first appointed director of the CDC in January 2021 and announced her resignation amid the ending of the national public health emergency declaration in May.
In just under two and a half years leading the CDC, Walensky oversaw several organizational changes — which received both praise and criticism — to improve the centers’ adaptability and public communication.
Greene asked where Walensky would be headed after her official resignation.
“But my question for you today, Dr. Walensky, is now that you’re going to be leaving the CDC pretty soon, what job are you going to take,” Greene said. “Are you going to be on the board of either Pfizer or Moderna because you’ve done one hell of a job at making sure that they’ve made a lot of money?”
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“Maybe I will just close by saying I don’t have plans after I step down,” Walensky responded.
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