Dr. Fauci: Vaccine distribution effort 'not starting from scratch'
White House chief medical adviser provides insight to the Biden administration's vaccine distribution plan
Liberal PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor pushed the debunked narrative Monday that the Biden administration was "starting from scratch" on the coronavirus vaccine rollout, in another example of the press lowering expectations for the new White House.
"The number-one thing that I hear from my sources when I say how bad is it, is it worse than you thought it was when it comes to former President Trump's response to the virus, literally 9 out of 10 times they say it's worse than we could've ever imagined," she said on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House."
Alcindor spoke over a chyron reporting the "breaking news" that Vice President Kamala Harris said the Trump administration had "no national strategy or plan for vaccinations" upon leaving office, which even left-leaning PolitiFact said was "wrong."
"What you have is a Biden administration that is, as Vice President Harris said, starting from scratch, and that is really, really hard," Alcindor said, as anchor Nicolle Wallace said, "Yeah."
However, White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci rejected that notion last month after a CNN report anonymously quoted Biden officials making the same claim.
"We certainly are not starting from scratch because there is activity going on from the distribution," Fauci said.
Harris made the comment to Axios, who initially fact-checked her in a tweet but then deleted it without explanation.
The Trump administration was criticized over some of the aspects of its distribution plan, but fact-checkers agreed it did have one that handed out the vaccines to states, who would then handle getting shots into arms. As Biden took office, the country had already reached 1 million vaccinations per day nationwide, on par with Biden's own goal of 100 million shots distributed in the first 100 days.
Despite a bumpy rollout, the U.S. leads the world in coronavirus vaccines distributed.
Alcindor, a political contributor to MSNBC, often injects left-wing commentary into her reporting and has said she views her role in journalism as being an advocate.
She has also repeatedly praised far-left New York Times magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose "1619 Project" has come under fire from historians for pushing a false narrative about the ties of slavery to the American Revolution, among other inaccuracies.
On Monday, Alcindor called her a "national treasure," just days after Hannah-Jones created yet another controversy at the New York Times by doxxing a Washington Free Beacon reporter who had emailed her questions.
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In November, she enthusiastically quoted a Democratic source who likened Biden's Cabinet to "superheroes" who were coming to "save us all."