PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor is working hard to promote the Biden administration’s lie that there was no COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan in place when the president took office.
The White House “says they inherited no vaccine distribution plan,” Alcindor said Tuesday, uncritically repeating an obvious falsehood. “Now, [White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki] says Biden admin has increased amount of weekly vaccine doses going to states to 13.5M a week – a 57% increase since Jan 20. Biden admin is also doubling supply to pharmacies: 2M doses going to them this week.”
Earlier, during an appearance on MSNBC, the PBS journalist said, “The No. 1 thing that I hear from my sources when I say, ‘how bad is it, is it worse than you thought it was when it comes to former President Trump’s response to the virus?’ Literally 9 out of 10 times, they say it’s worse than we could’ve ever imagined.”
Her White House sources tell her the same thing that the White House is saying out loud? Amazing.
This lie about vaccine distribution, by the way, begins first with a ludicrous, anonymously sourced CNN report titled “Biden inheriting nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan and must start ‘from scratch,’ sources say.”
“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” a source told CNN.
Another source said that the Biden administration had to start from “square one.”
This lie has been repeated by even Vice President Kamala Harris.
“There was no stockpile … of vaccines,” Harris said in an interview that aired this weekend. “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!”
That Alcindor’s reporting is identical to the administration’s talking points is a detail that can’t be overlooked.
Now, somewhat complicating the matter is the fact that the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is playing both sides of the issue, saying on the one hand that there was a plan but also saying Harris has a point.
“We’re certainly not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution,” Fauci told reporters in late January. “We’re coming in with fresh ideas but also some ideas that were not bad ideas with the previous administration. You can’t say it was absolutely not usable at all.”
“It’s taking what’s going on,” he added, “but amplifying it in a big way.”
Later, however, after the vice president’s interview aired, Fauci said, “I believe what the vice president is referring to is what is the process of actually getting these doses into people.”
But the thing is: We don’t need Fauci’s input to know the “from scratch” narrative is nonsense.
As of this writing, 56.1 million vaccine doses have been administered in the United States. This didn’t occur in just the 27 days since the inauguration (vaccinations began on Dec. 14, after all). For further reference, on the morning of Jan. 20, as Joe Biden prepared to be sworn in as the 46th president, 15.6 million people had already been dosed.
So yes, there was obviously a plan in place by the time Biden came into office.
Yet, here is the Biden administration claiming otherwise in an obvious attempt to lower expectations. Saying it had to start from scratch, and getting people to believe it, allows the administration to position itself as conquering heroes if it hits its modest goal of 100 million doses in 100 days, an accomplishment the U.S. was already set to achieve before Biden was even sworn into office. Inversely, if the Biden White House fails to reach its own vaccination goal, it now has a ready-made excuse.
If you’re in the press, and you can’t spot when administration officials are trying to rope you into promoting their cynical, well-crafted talking points, perhaps it’s time to consider whether journalism is right for you.
Or perhaps promoting obvious political narratives is the point.
