Another spin doctor: Biden surgeon general’s obsession with COVID ‘misinformation’
- April 2, 2026
Michael Chamberlain, Washington Examiner
It’s tempting to try to forget the COVID-19 pandemic. Nobody likes to dwell on bad memories. But we do ourselves no favors if we forget how the federal, state, and local governments responded to the crisis — especially the public health bureaucracies.
From the possible source of the virus in China to the effectiveness of masks to social distancing to school closures to vaccine mandates, officials squandered the public’s trust and goodwill with dishonesty, arrogance, and authoritarianism.
And we’re still learning the extent of the rot. Documents recently obtained by my group, Protect the Public’s Trust, further illustrate just how far the Biden administration went in combating what they called “misinformation” around COVID-19 — all the while spreading their own often faulty and inconsistent messaging about the pandemic and vaccination.
The documents, which contain talking points and agenda items for former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and his various interviews with major outlets, reveal how the Biden administration forced corporations and Americans to swallow certain narratives — and reject others — about the pandemic. They included points ensuring that medical experts provided certain information about COVID-19 and vaccination to the public, sorting through which Americans were “persuadable” by the government’s COVID information, making sure journalists were flagging what the government deemed “misinformation,” and pushing the surgeon general himself to emotionally manipulate Americans into complying.