At a time when former President Donald Trump is surprising his critics by encouraging Americans to get vaccinated for COVID-19, the House Judiciary GOP posted an anti-vax tweet this week. The tweet in question has since been removed, but it is still being slammed as misleading and irresponsible.
On Thursday, a tweet from @JudiciaryGOP read, “If the booster shots work, why don’t they work?” In fact, booster shots of the COVID vaccines have been shown to significantly increase immunity and protect recipients from the coronavirus, including the latest omicron variant.
That claim echoed what Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio posted on December 23:
Hey Fauci, \n\nIf masks and mandates work, why don\u2019t they work?— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Rep. Jim Jordan) 1640276702
Actually, they work well. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top White House medical adviser, has been stressing that although it is certainly possible to be vaccinated for COVID-19 and get infected anyway, the vaccinated are much more likely to survive a COVID-19 infection than the unvaccinated. At this point, the vast majority of COVID-19 fatalities in the United States are among the unvaccinated — which @JudiciaryGOP failed to mention.
They finally deleted it.pic.twitter.com/PVkJGFihze— Bradley P. Moss (@Bradley P. Moss) 1640961850
Nick Beaudrot, in response to the House Judiciary GOP tweet, posted:
Not gonna retweet the House Judiciary GOP's nonsense, I will just note that you can eliminate like 95% of mortality risk through vaccination and still the majority of people dying will be unvaccinated.pic.twitter.com/sApu6Z7MNy— Mr. Nick Beaudrot (@Mr. Nick Beaudrot) 1640908737
Patrick Chovanec was equally critical of @JudiciaryGOP, posting:
Really disgraceful that the GOP House Judiciary Committee is pushing an opening anti-vax message now.— Patrick Chovanec (@Patrick Chovanec) 1640958903
Politico’s Sam Stein noted that the anti-vaxxer tweet from @JudiciaryGOP is totally different from what Trump has been saying about vaccines. During a recent appearance in Dallas with radio host Bill O’Reilly, Trump revealed that he had received a COVID-19 booster shot and encouraged others to do the same.
Interesting. the House Judiciary GOP account erased its tweet calling into question whether boosters worked\n\nhttps://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1476629444869693441\u00a0\u2026— Sam Stein (@Sam Stein) 1640969938
Seeing this shared a ton for how overtly anti-vaccine it is. The other interesting element is that comes a little bit after Trump himself pushed boosters\u2014suggesting that there will be a divide in the GOP ranks that the party will have to reconcile. https://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1476629444869693441\u00a0\u2026— Sam Stein (@Sam Stein) 1640919102
Here are some more reactions to @JudiciaryGOP’s anti-vaxxer tweet:
Even more evidence that the GOP is embarked upon a campaign of sabotage of the country in order to regain power.— Dennis P. Crawford (@Dennis P. Crawford) 1640924803
Just to be clear, vaccines work. Failure to vaccinate kills. Those lying about it are causing sickness and death.https://twitter.com/cooperlund/status/1476612381153411077\u00a0\u2026— Centist Texan in Central Texas (@Centist Texan in Central Texas) 1640962172
Odds are they were contacted by Twitter to remove it or be suspended due to COVID misinformation rules— WVASPARTAN (@WVASPARTAN) 1640970083
