Trump claims Americans are refusing to get the COVID vaccine because they do not TRUST the Biden administration or the 2020 election result
Former President Donald Trump has claimed that vaccination rates are falling because the public does not trust the Biden administration, the mainstream media and the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In a statement on his 'Save America' website, the former president wrote: 'Joe Biden kept talking about how good of a job he's doing on the distribution of the Vaccine that was developed by Operation Warp Speed or, quite simply, the Trump Administration.
'He's not doing well at all. He's way behind schedule, and people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth.'
The vaccination effort appears to have stalled in recent weeks, with 520,000 vaccines now being administered a day, compared to an April peak of 3.38million.
The Biden Administration hoped to have at least 70 percent of American adults partially vaccinated against COVID by Independence Day - a goal they missed by three percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Former President Donald Trump said on Sunday that fewer people are getting vaccinated because they don't trust the Biden administration, he wrote in a statement on his website
The new cases come as the country's vaccination effort has stalled
Trump and conservative media outlets have criticized President Biden for not giving Trump credit for creating the vaccine through Operation Warp Speed, however many Trump supporters have refused to get the vaccine.
The Trump administration established Operation Warp Speed in April 2020 to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID vaccines. The public-private partnership has been lauded by people on both sides of the aisle.
However, the first time Trump encouraged his followers to get the vaccine was in March, after it was revealed he and Melania Trump got the COVID vaccine in January.
But Biden is not placing the blame on Trump for missing his administration's goal. The president publicly called out Facebook on Saturday for 'killing people' and allegedly allowing anti-vaccination misinformation to spread on its platform.
A source from the Biden administration said that the White House has been asking for 'months' for help fighting what it called disinformation, according to Fox News.
Despite its puffed-up statements, Facebook hasn't done enough to stamp out untruths, the administration official said.
The Trump administration established Operation Warp Speed in April 2020 to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Above, Trump arrives Sunday at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Trump and conservative media outlets have criticized President Joe Biden for not giving the former president credit for creating the vaccine through Operation Warp Speed. Above, Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrive Sunday at the White House
Facebook has defended itself against U.S. President Joe Biden's assertion in a lengthy corporate blog post by Guy Rosen, a company vice president.
In the post, he wrote, 'The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Biden's goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.'
The disagreement has bubbled over after the Indian Delta variant has ripped across the world - and now is showing up in U.S. data, which accounts for as many 97 percent of infections in some states, even as polls show, many of the unvaccinated believe the negative information that's circulating about the shots - information the White House says is false.
Many still refuse to get the vaccine, despite the virus spreading among unvaccinated people
On Sunday, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said that 99.5 percent of new COVID-19 deaths are happening among unvaccinated people, and expressed concern that the issue could quickly become worse.
'I am worried about what is to come because we are seeing increasing cases among the unvaccinated in particular. And while, if you are vaccinated, you are very well protected against hospitalization and death, unfortunately that is not true if you are not vaccinated,' Murthy said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union.
Covid-19 cases in the U.S. are up by about 70 percent and hospitalizations are up by 36 percent over the past week, according to the CDC. And at least 38 states have seen a 50 percent increase in cases.
A total of 43 states and the District of Columbia have documented an increase in average daily cases over the past two weeks, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
Of those states, at least 15, most of them in the South, have seen their numbers of infections at least double across a 14-day period.
Even states with high vaccination rates, such as California, Illinois, New York and Vermont are seeing cases rise.
The U.S. is now recording an average of 23,000 COVID-19 cases per day, which is the highest figure seen since late May, the analysis found.
In response to the rise in cases and drop in vaccination rates, the Biden administration is planning to ramp up efforts to combat vaccine misinformation in areas where vaccination rates are lagging and COVID cases are rising, according to a report.
The Democratic National Committee is considering working with SMS companies to vet texts and send messages directly to Americans to stop the spread of inaccurate information, Politico reported Monday.
The party organization is also reportedly considering employing 'aggressive' fact-checkers to monitor communications in a plan drawing furious pushback from conservatives.
The report did not specify how the DNC, an outside party organization, would work with companies that handle text messages.
