Tipsheet

Dr. Jha: ‘The Virus Is Going to be With Us Forever,' Undermining a Key Point from Candidate Biden in 2020

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 23, 2022 6:00 PM

Not only is this White House lacking transparency when it comes to key aspects of President Joe Biden's positive COVID-19 result, but it also has been cagey with its responses to questions that reporters ask. It's no wonder that, as Sarah highlighted about Thursday's press briefing, that George Condon, of the National Journal, not bringing out Biden's doctor "would be the least transparency of any White House and 50 years on a presidential illness." Then there's the hypocrisy. Compared to all the promises that then candidate Biden made, his administration has now done a complete 180.

During Friday's press briefing, COVID-?19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha acknowledged something that many of us have come to realize and accept, even, that the virus is here to stay. It's pretty much endemic at this point. 

After calling on those who have not yet been vaccinated to receive the vaccine, Dr. Jha aptly pointed out "this virus is going to be with us forever." Polling has showed though, that Americans who have not been vaccinated are unlikely to get the vaccine. 

Dr. Jha was responding to a question from a reporter about Congress having not funded boosters for the fall, which provided him with an opportunity to call for Congress to pass even more funding. He also doubled down on how vaccines, and boosters, are the best way to build up immunity. It's worth repeatedly reminding, though, that Biden has been received both doses of the vaccines, and has been double boosted, yet still contracted the virus. How, exactly, he did contract the virus, is one more detail the White House doesn't believe the American people deserve to know, since they claim it doesn't matter.

Left out of the conversation, though, was how the conversation conflicts with a campaign promise from then Democratic nominee Joe Biden in 2020, as Joseph A. Wulfsohn highlighted for Fox News:

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The White House's messaging flies in the face of what Biden promised to the American people during the 2020 presidential election. 

"I'll put in place a plan to deal with this pandemic responsibly. I've already done it! And bring this country together around testing, tracing, and masking," Biden said at a rally in October 2020. "I'm not going to shut down the economy. I'm not going to shut down the country, but I'm going to shut down the virus."

Many have also taken to letting a tweet from Biden in October 2020 resurface, when he promised to "shut down the virus."

Biden and then Democratic nominee for Vice President, Kamala Harris, also sowed the initial distrust for the vaccine when, on the campaign trail, said they would not trust the vaccine simply because it became available under the Trump administration. Biden and Harris went on to get publicly vaccinated when the vaccine became available to them, after getting elected. 

Further, the death toll from COVID is much higher under Biden than it was under Trump, and has been for some time.

Biden known for his fear-mongering and coercing Americans into getting vaccinated, claiming multiple times it was a "pandemic of the unvaccinated." He himself also misled on the efficacy of the vaccines, by claiming during a CNN town hall in July of last year that "you're not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations." CNN itself hilariously had to fact-check those statements, as they have with other CNN town halls the president done. 

To add insult to injury, Dr. Jha and Jean-Pierre not only doubled down on not making Dr. Kevin O'Connor, Biden's longtime personal physician, available, they claimed reporters have heard from him, in the former of a letter. 

Dr. O'Connor released another letter on Saturday, posted to the White House briefing room website, indicating that the president finished his second full day of Paxlovid on Friday night, and that "[h]is symptoms continue to improve." With preliminary sequencing having returned, the president most likely has the BA5 variant, which the letter notes is responsible for 75-80 percent of infections in the United States right now.