Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican, Georgia) said on Tuesday she didn’t want her staff educated after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky offered to clarify the reporting procedure on Covid-19 vaccines for Greene’s team. (Watch the video below.)
It was basically an interrogation intended to humiliate Walensky in front of a House committee. The anti-vaxx lawmaker interpreted data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, to baselessly suggest that an inordinate amount of Americans died from the shots, and suffered miscarriages and stillbirths.
Greene blathered on about vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna reaping fortunes. She facetiously asked Walensky, who leaves her post at the end of the month, if she planned to join the board of either company “because you’ve done one hell of a job at making sure that they’ve made a lot of money.”
Walensky kept her cool, noting that she could not address the economics of the vaccines because the CDC didn’t purchase them. But she did want to shed light on VAERS. Walensky said the data includes any adverse event that happened to someone after they received a vaccine. That includes being hit by a truck.
But Greene pressed on.
“You did nothing about that and continue to push vaccines,” Greene said. “That’s what the American people care about.”
“We review all of the things that come into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. I’d be happy to have our staff educate your staff on the matter,” Walensky replied.
“I don’t want my staff educated,” Greene snapped. “You should educate the American people about what you’ve done of 1.5 million reports because they feel like you’ve done nothing and continue to say ‘safe and effective.’”
Walensky concluded with a smile: “Maybe I will just close by saying I don’t have plans after I, uh, step down. Thank you.”
Walensky announced her resignation in May, saying the waning of the pandemic was a good time for a transition. Her last day will be June 30.
After more than 670 million doses since the shots became available in December 2020, “the good news is that vaccines are still expected to be effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalisation, and death from Covid-19,” Yale Medicine wrote in May.