Social media users demanded apologies from Rachel Maddow and MSNBC over the liberal host’s insistence in March that the COVID-19 vaccine stops the virus dead in its tracks and prevents further transmission.
“Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person,” Maddow said on her show the evening of March 29, 2021.
“A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else,” she added with a shrug. “It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people.”
The vaccines, she said, “will get us to the end of this.”
While the COVID-19 vaccines did prove to be effective against the first strains of the coronavirus, the emergence and rapid spread of the omicron variant, even among the vaccinated, has raised cause for concern. Initial studies have shown that omicron cases feature milder symptoms than their predecessors but are more contagious.
In light of the new challenge, the medical community has urged Americans to get boosted for further protection. Lab tests have revealed that while two doses may not be strong enough to prevent infection, a booster shot of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine produces virus-fighting antibodies capable of tackling omicron.
With Maddow’s March declaration now in question, social media users let MSNBC know that her comments did not age well.
“It’s wild how there are no consequences for all these vaccine lies,” sports journalist Clay Travis tweeted. “If you wonder why many are skeptical of the covid ‘vaccine’ it’s because they remember what they were told about how effective the vaccine was. All that Rachel Maddow says here is untrue.”