Former Centers for Disease Control & Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Monday there was an attempt within the health care bureaucracy to stifle talk that coronavirus vaccinations may not have been a cure-all.
Redfield made the comments on "The Story" following a court ruling the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in trying to pressure social media companies to suppress countervailing COVID-19 content.
The suit, brought by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, alleged the Biden administration threatened social media companies with antitrust lawsuits or legal changes that either protect their liability or silence dissenting voices.
Redfield said he was not a firsthand witness to concerns over negative public discussion about vaccinations causing Americans to eschew the injection, but knew of individuals who were.
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Discourse to that effect was very often the subject of the purported censorship that critics have highlighted since the pandemic first erupted.
"I always said… my position was just tell the American public the truth: There are side effects to vaccines. Tell them the truth and don't try to package it," Redfield said.
Redfield added that the idea of "complete immunize[ation]" is "false perception" and that there has never been a complete immunization.
"[T]here was such an attempt to not let anybody get any hint that maybe vaccines weren't foolproof, which, of course, we now know they have significant limitations," he said.
The Trump-era former official went on to conclude that the perception of a lack of honest discourse may have led to vaccine hesitancy – and that vaccine "mandates" caused the same deterioration in public trust.
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"I think we should have really confidence and not be afraid to debate the issues that we think are in the public's interest and just tell the public the truth," he went on.
In the federal court ruling, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals declared President Biden, the CDC, the FBI and the U.S. Surgeon General, cannot force social media companies to remove content it believes is problematic.
That issue also came to a head in House hearings featuring two of the journalists involved in disseminating the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi and former California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger. The files revealed communications between the feds and companies like X – formerly known as Twitter.
In the circuit court's ruling, it appeared to give the Biden administration a small victory in that it tossed a Louisiana judge's determination the government couldn't contact platforms to issue takedown requests.
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Fox News' Brie Stimson contributed to this report.
