Ohio's Jim Jordan grilled Dr. Birx on vaccine efficacy
The exchange took place just as the FDA and CDC began promoting COVID vaccination shots for kids as young as six months old
With the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and state health officials now promoting COVID vaccinations for children ages 6 months to six years old, at least one governor has pushed back on the idea while members of Congress are still asking about the efficacy of the shot.
Within hours of the notice shots for young kids being approved by the FDA, North Carolina, the Department of Health and Human Services was lining up its rollout of the shots.
It was a totally different story in Florida, however.
Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis confirmed in a recent press briefing that his state has not "ordered mRNA shots for the babies" and "we recommend against it." He said his team looked at the data from European counties, some of which are not even recommending the shot for people under age 30.
The CDC's own data show that both deaths from COVID and severe cases of the virus in children are rare. Even the hospitalization data has been questioned after Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted late last year that officials were "...overcounting the number of children who are, quote, "hospitalized with Covid," as opposed to because of Covid.”
In terms of hospitalizations of children, CDC data showed that multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) was the main concern for children who had also contracted COVID, and those children were mainly minority children with comorbidities like obesity or had a significant chronic condition.
While the risk to healthy children of all ages is low, data on vaccine injuries has shown the risk of severe side effects and even death can and have occurred in children. There have been multiple studies and it is now becoming more widely reported that there is a higher incidence of myocarditis reported in young males ages 16-19 after a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
On the national level, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) questioned Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump, about the efficacy of the vaccines.
The exchange between Jordan and Birx took place during a congressional hearing on June 23 on whether government officials like CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and even President Biden were "guessing or lying" in their claims that "people who were vaccinated couldn't get it."
[Read: CDC's Walensky "pivots" on fully vaccinated language]
"I don't know," Birx responded. "All I know is there was evidence from the global pandemic that natural reinfection was occurring, and since the vaccine was based on natural immunity, you cannot make the conclusion that the vaccine will do better than natural infection."
It wasn't touched on during Jordan's questioning of Birx, but it should be noted that the CDC also regularly moved the goal posts on masking as it related to vaccination status.
Jordan didn't let that response go and reminded her of the fact that she was one of the "experts" and was on the task force involved in these decisions and she basically just admitted that she "can't rule out the fact that our government was lying to us when they told us the vaccinated could not get the virus,"
Birx responded: "I don't know about their discussions that they had in the task force."
Following the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines in late 2020, top health officials like Walensky, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and even then-presidential candidate Joe Biden have claimed getting vaccinated meant a person was protected against contracting COVID-19.
Similarly, federal and state health officials have consistently recommended that Americans receive continued "booster shots" in order to reinforce their protection from the virus.
Here's the exchange:
Jordon also questioned Birx on whether or not the U.S. should leave the World Health Organization (WHO) and on Gain of Function research.