Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is still going on about VAERS, and she’s still misrepresenting the facts.
VAERS refers to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a federal resource recapping detrimental health impacts that were experienced in some proximity to vaccines. Collection of data as part of that program is proactive, meaning even if no substantive connection between the two events has been shown, the data can be — and is — included. A seemingly high number of deaths reported to VAERS in association with COVID-19 vaccinations doesn’t mean that many deaths have been experienced because of the shots. One relevant factor is that COVID-19 vaccines were rapidly rolled out at an extremely expansive scale — meaning the total of detrimental health impacts that patients happened to experience around the time of these shots could be expected to spike in raw data terms.
That wasn’t the only point of contention that arose from Greene’s remarks during the hearing where she was speaking, which was a gathering of the subcommittee on the House Oversight Committee that is dealing in this Congress specifically with issues related to COVID-19. She also complained bitterly about Democrats who during the hearing were raising complaints about abortion restrictions. These Democrats contended that Republicans’ description of outside restrictions that purportedly limited the effective handling of the doctor-patient relationship extended, in reality, to those bans on abortion — which Greene called “murder” during the hearing.
“It’s appalling, it’s embarrassing, and it’s endangering American lives,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said during the hearing, discussing some of the Republican arguments around responses to COVID-19. “Now, the House Republicans have built an entire platform around controlling women’s bodies, banning health care for LGBTQ+ people, and putting corporate profits over the health of everyday Americans.” Though Garcia spoke before Greene, he has frequently responded more directly to her in the past, and the context of his remarks made applying them to Greene an easy connection. She’s helping lead the promotional push for this. “Now the truth is most doctors and medical professionals continue to support common sense guidelines about pandemic response, just like they overwhelmingly support access to abortion, gender-affirming care, and HIV prevention,” Garcia continued.
