The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
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HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.

Based on reports shared with the Committee, FMG spent on average over $20 million per month for the design and execution of the Campaign' In its proposal for the task order, the company asserted that it could benefit ASPA by using a strategic mix of paid and earned media with exclusive radio partnerships, research-based messaging, and reinforced messaging from trusted influencers, celebrities, and sports figures.

FMG's Campaign strategies were grounded in several theories of behavior change and communication, "with the expectation that exposure to Campaign messages prompts change in cognitions antecedent to Campaign-targeted behavior."

I The health belief model, used by the Campaign, posits that "a person's belief in a personal threat of an illness or disease together with a person's belief in the effectiveness of the recommended health behavior or action will predict the likelihood the person will adopt the behavior." 2

The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.

Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.

Over the course of its existence, the Campaign came to serve as a critical vehicle for disseminating the Biden-Harris administration's messaging on mask usage, social distancing, vaccine effectiveness, the risks COVID-19 posed to children, and how to reopen schools, businesses, and civil society.

As the Committee of jurisdiction over public health, it is important for the Committee and federal public health entities to understand why the Campaign led to a loss of public trust in HHS and its agencies, as well as consider reforms that will prevent a repeat of the same failure during potential future public health emergencies.

This report is a chronological examination of ads, blog posts, and other public relations material produced for the "We Can Do This" Campaign and overlays Campaign activity with critical events during the Biden-Harris
administration's response to the pandemic.

The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.

Much of the scientific content directly featured in or alluded to in Campaign ads and other promotional material was drawn from CDC recommendations, guidance, and research, critical parts of which proved to be deeply flawed. The CDC's errors and failures to update recommendations and guidance were reflected in the "We Can Do This" ads and promotional
materials:
• CDC's guidance, which the Campaign relied on, went beyond the terms of FDA's Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to state, without evidence, that COVID vaccines were highly effective against transmission. This ultimately had a negative impact on
vaccine confidence and the CDC's credibility when proven untrue. '4

• The CDC had inconsistent and flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks. '5

• The CDC consistently overstated the risk of COVID-19 to children. '6 • The CDC continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans ages six months
and older, which has made the United States a global outlier in COVID-19 policy. '7

The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.

Only in January 2022 did the CDC update its masking guidelines, finally acknowledging for the first time in two years, that cloth masks and face coverings "do not offer as much protection as surgical masks or respirators."42

At that time, around half of the country's 53 million children remained compulsorily masked.43
Many states closely followed CDC guidance and required masks for students of all ages, regardless of vaccination status. Some localities went beyond CDC guidance, requiring masks for students outdoors at recess.

• Most masks worn by children were cloth masks which, by the CDC's own admission, did not offer significant protection against viral spread. 4S In response to the January 2022 updated guidance from the CDC, some
  school districts updated their mask policy to exclude cloth masks, with states issuing child sized
  KN95 masks to schools.46

President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?

In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.

On February 18, 2021, the CDC released school re-opening guidance that, if implemented, would have prevented "more than 90% of schools in the United States, including in almost all of the 50 largest counties in the country, from fully reopening."66

Doctors who reviewed the guidance expressed dismay that the CDC's newly released guidance would continue to keep schools closed
for months, even after they could realistically reopen safely. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and Congressional investigations later revealed CDC's school reopening guidance was influenced by the American Federation of Teachers' (AFT) President, Randi Weingarten. Weingarten received direct access to then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Through this quiet backchannel to the CDC, the AFT was directly
able to edit guidance and push for prolonged school closures.

During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.

Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, the "We Can Do This" Campaign messaging consistently emphasized the possibility of renewed school closures if parents failed to force their children to wear masks, socially distance from friends, or get and stay up to date on their COVID- 19 vaccine. The Campaign and the CDC persisted in this messaging after it was apparent schools
were not superspreader locations and children were not at high risk of serious illness or death from
COVID-19.

In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.

March 18, 2021: Around Here, My family's lived in our town for six generations, so looking out for our neighbors is something that comes naturally to us. So when COVID hit, we did what it took to protect each other. Now vaccines are here and some folks are easin' up a bit, but that's a big mistake. That's because there are these new forms of the virus
and they're spreading quickly. Want to know how to fight 'em? Just do what you've been doing. Got a mask that fits good and snug? Perfect. Giving your neighbors at least six feet of space, avoiding crowds, and not hanging out inside other people's houses? That's all good stuff, and now, it's more important than ever. Look, I'll definitely get my vaccine when it's my turn, but now isn't the time to let your guard or your mask down
(emphasis added).

In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.

Even with clear disagreement between CDC Director Walensky and CDC scientists, from March 2021 to at least January 2022 when federal vaccine mandates went into effect, the "We Can Do This" Campaign often adopted Director Walensky's message that COVID-19 vaccines stop transmission. 123 The Campaign's messages in the spring, sponsored by HHS and the CDC, were
in large part based on the mistaken assumption that the COVID-19 vaccines reduced transmission. The Biden-Harris administration, HHS, and the CDC had, in effect, wagered their credibility with the American people on the issue of COVID-19 vaccinations based on the premise that vaccinated individuals could not transmit COVID-19 to others. This ended up being a critical mistake when, just months later, breakthrough COVID-19 infections in vaccinated people began being widely
reported.

Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.

On May 10, 2021, the FDA expanded its EUA of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to include adolescents aged 12-15 years. Two days later, on May 12, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) made its interim recommendation that all 12-15- year-olds get vaccinated. '25 Central to the Campaign's messaging on the need to vaccinate 12-15- year-olds was the premise that vaccination was key to reopening schools in the fall for in-person instruction.

The CDC repeatedly issued statements, guidance documents, and other materials stressing that COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots were necessary for school re-openings. The CDC's insistence that schools could only safely reopen when all children were vaccinated (the vast majority of whom were at low risk for severe illness from COVID-19)126 suggests the Biden- Harris Administration was implementing policies dictated by its political allies in teachers' unions,
rather than by the best scientific evidence available at the time. 27

HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.

The HHS taxpayer-funded Campaign used emotionally manipulative ads to make clear that getting vaccinated was the only way to see friends, hang out, go on dates, have parties, vacation, and have sleepovers. In the summer of 2024, all HHS Campaign materials available on
You Tube were made private and are no longer accessible to the public.

June 16, 2021: Yes (Video)129
"Say yes. Say yes to seeing friends. Yes to hanging out. Yes to vacations. Yes to sleepovers. After a year of saying no. Imagine how good yes is going to feel. Everyone 12 and older is
now eligible for COVID vaccines."

Read the rest on Brownstone.org