CDC director stonewalls GOP questions on social media censorship

Outgoing Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky on Tuesday refused to reply questions from Home Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) about social media censorship of medical data on COVID-19 insurance policies and vaccine efficacy.

“Right here’s what I can inform you,” Walensky mentioned, “crucial factor that has gotten us out of this pandemic is, I feel, our vaccine and the way effectively they work and the way secure they're, and it was actually essential that the American folks understood [that].”

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Walensky was referred to as earlier than the Choose Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic beneath the specter of attainable subpoena if she didn't testify willingly. Chairman of the subcommittee Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) mentioned that his committee invited Walensky to testify 10 weeks in the past, to which Biden administration officers protested that it was “inadequate time” to arrange Walensky’s testimony.

“[I]t seems that perhaps the Biden administration didn't need you to talk concerning these matters,” Wenstrup mentioned.

When Comer requested Walensky straight in regards to the communications between the CDC and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta or Jack Dorsey’s Twitter regarding censoring data, Walensky repeatedly refused to talk on issues “presently beneath court docket litigation.”

“A very powerful factor we had been working in direction of at CDC [was] to get info out to folks so that they understood in plain language what was essential,” mentioned Walensky.

Later in her testimony, Walensky pressured that earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, “most individuals hadn’t heard of the CDC,” noting that the group “was by no means actually supposed for the common [American]” however quite clinicians and medical scientists.

When requested by Comer concerning censorship of the lab leak concept specifically, Walensky repeatedly addressed that the highest precedence of her company was to advertise the protection and efficacy of vaccines.

“It seems,” responded Comer, “that among the views that the federal government censored, just like the lab leak concept and a few questions in regards to the vaccine had been right all alongside." He mentioned that it was possible that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.

Wenstrup mentioned in his opening remarks that the goals of the committee are to totally examine the pandemic response in an effort to be ready for future public emergencies.

“I suppose that some would quite the American folks merely transfer on. However with out evaluate of course of and decision-making, it’s troublesome to plan for the longer term. It's the obligation of this choose subcommittee to make sure that we handle failings, so we're not doomed to repeat them,” mentioned Wenstrup.