Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel ripped the media on Tuesday for running a “misinformation campaign” and holding President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to different standards for their handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
On “Fox & Friends,” Siegel argued that the media has taken an approach of looking the other way and congratulating Biden, while Trump was consistently knocked for a COVID response that the Biden administration appears to be building off of, rather than reinventing.
“I’ve seen a huge change. … With President Trump, it was suddenly like he was the ‘physician in chief’ and everything he said was held to a medical standard,” Siegel said.
“Now the reverse is true, the president [Biden] is not held to a medical standard whatsoever, which he shouldn’t be, but again there’s a misinformation campaign going out.”
Siegel said that the problem with the media is that they have shown more interest in politicizing the virus and obscuring health messaging than talking about new important information the public needs, such as clear, simple guidelines on what to do after receiving the vaccine or steps needed to reopen schools.
“When you see politicians overcoming public health officials or getting the public officials, like the head of the CDC or Dr. Fauci, to change their points of view based on politics, the public doesn’t have the confidence it needs,” he added.
Siegel added that the media largely hasn’t covered important revelations relating to the virus, such as a reduction in cases by 77% over the past six weeks and recent information suggesting that the South African variant may not be as dangerous as originally reported.
“It’s almost as if [Democrats] are using the pandemic to advance a political agenda, rather than responding to the pandemic scientifically, which is what they promised they would do,” he said.
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci reversed last week his previous rejection of claims that the Biden administration was “starting from scratch” with the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.
It came after Vice President Kamala Harris revived the claim during an interview with Axios.
“There was no stockpile … of vaccines,” Harris told Axios co-founder Mike Allen. “There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations. We were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try and figure it out. And so in many ways, we’re starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year!”
Despite contradicting his own remarks from last month, Fauci not only defended the vice president but also knocked the Trump administration’s vaccine rollout when he was asked about her comments last week.
“What I think the vice president is referring to is, the actual plan of getting the vaccine doses into people’s arms was really rather vague. I mean, it was not a well-coordinated plan,” Fauci told CNN.
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
By Jeff Field | Fox News
Some of the nation’s leading public health officials are promoting “pseudoscience” in order to prolong coronavirus lockdowns across America, Laura Ingraham charged Monday.
“The Ingraham Angle” host opened the program with a montage of Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s various opinions on mask-wearing, beginning with him saying last March there was no reason to wear a mask and ending with his statement last month that wearing two masks was better than wearing one.
“For a long time, people of good faith were willing to overlook some of the goalpost- shifting,” Ingraham said, “Because Fauci led everyone to believe that normalcy, don’t worry, was right around the corner.”
However, Ingraham added, Fauci isn’t the only medical expert “spewing lies or unprovable medical accusations.” Ingraham also targeted National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, who described a mask as “a life-saving medical device” over the weekend.
Francis declined the opportunity to appear on “The Ingraham Angle” Monday, but the host said that if he had appeared, she would have asked him for evidence prior to March 2020 that masks work to stop the spread of viral respiratory disease.
“I’ve spent much of the past year trying to sound the alarm that it’s liberty versus lockdown,” Ingraham said. “Because there’s always going to be an excuse for rich and powerful people to take away the freedom of those they don’t even like that much, much less respect.
“After almost a year it’s clear that Dr. Fauci will never be comfortable saying that we can move forward … If we’re going to escape this endless nightmare, we must have a more balanced and realistic assessment of what our situation is right now. And Dr. Fauci cannot provide us that.”
Ingraham ended her monologue, by calling on viewers to “say no to the pseudoscience masquerading as seriousness. It’s really just garden variety left-wing political punditry when you look at it.
“Liars in lab coats are still liars.”