Biden did not tell people to get a COVID shot as Hurricane Ian neared
Biden did not tell people to get a COVID shot as Hurricane Ian neared
(Reuters) - Social media users have been sharing a year-old clip of comments from U.S. President Joe Biden and wrongly suggesting it showed him telling people to get a COVID vaccination to protect themselves against Hurricane Ian as it approached Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The comments in the clip were made in August 2021. They were also widely shared online at the time, edited to leave out key context.
In the 2021 comments, Biden did not suggest that COVID vaccinations would protect anyone against hurricanes. He urged Americans in hurricane-prone states to get vaccinated to protect themselves from COVID-19 in case they had to flee their homes and stay in crowded shelters. He was speaking at a time when the Delta variant of COVID-19 was spreading in Florida, Louisiana and other states, and hospitalization numbers were rising.
Several social media users have reposted the clip and inaccurately said it was from Sept. 27, 2022.
One Facebook post has been shared more than 1,000 times (here). A TikTok clip with the misdated clip garnered at least half a million views as of the writing of this article (here). Other examples can be seen (here) (here).
Reuters addressed the misleading posts about the clip when they spread a year ago (here).
The snippet was part of a wider statement he made on Aug. 10, 2021 (around timestamp 1:36) (youtu.be/I-KKvYBYIZ4?t=97). In passages that were not included in the clip, Biden said that while “we can’t prevent hurricanes from making landfall,” a serious sickening from COVID-19 was a danger that could be prevented through vaccination. “If you wind up having to stay in a shelter, you don’t want to add COVID-19 to the list of dangers,” he said.
In an interview with Reuters on Aug. 18, 2021, the top U.S. official in charge of disaster relief, Deanne Criswell, had a similar message about vaccination and how evacuation and use of shelters could lead to an increased exposure to COVID-19 (here).
he COVID situation has changed significantly in hurricane-affected states since 2021.
The U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention tracker (here) (here), shows daily COVID-19 cases have been dropping since at least July 2022 in Florida and Louisiana.
VERDICT
Missing context. This message about COVID-19 vaccination and hurricane preparedness dates back to Aug. 10, 2021. At the time, U.S. President Biden urged Americans in hurricane-prone states to get vaccinated in case they had to flee their homes and stay in crowded shelters.
