Federal public health officials may have feared they were walking into a Republican buzzsaw at Thursday's hearing of the doctor-heavy House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which reviewed vaccine safety systems and injury compensation programs.
But GOP members went surprisingly easy on the FDA's Peter Marks, CDC's Daniel Jernigan and Health Resources and Services Administration's Reed Grimes, speaking more often in terms of disappointment than denunciation.
They rarely disputed the feds' claims about COVID-19 vaccines even when officials spoke in the language of absolutes, such as saying the jabs "prevent" rather than mitigate hospitalization and death, and accepted their statistics at face value.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) at COVID vaccine hearing: "I'm not a doctor but I have a PhD in recognizing bullshit when I hear it." pic.twitter.com/gQXpNF7qol
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 15, 2024
