by WorldTribune Staff, August 6, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
Reports from congressional committees and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosures show that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden-Harris regime allocated roughly $1 billion of taxpayer dollars to promote the Covid injection and target those who were hesitant about getting the shot.
The funds were used for advertisements and media which critics say shamed those who believed they did not need the jab. The ads ran across television, radio, print, and digital and social media platforms, reaching hundreds of national and local media outlets.
The committee’s report found that the Biden-Harris team’s HHS shelled out $911,174,285 to the behavior change research and strategy firm Fors Marsh (formerly Fors Marsh Group) for the multimedia advertising campaign between August 2020 and June 2023.
The committee noted that, “in an attempt to target and sway vaccine hesitant populations, FMG created audience ‘personas’ that represented how target audiences experienced the pandemic and tried to identify which messages had the most potential to motivate them.”
Critics say the Biden-Harris regimes was essentially paying media companies not only for positive coverage on the shots but to convince skeptical viewers and readers to take the jab.
In addition, according to a 2022 report by Blaze, “HHS revealed that it purchased advertising from major news networks including ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, legacy media publications including the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax, and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations. These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety.”
A congressional staff report released by House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans in October 2024 criticized the campaign, stating it utilized taxpayer funds in an advertising blitz which overpromised the effectiveness of the shots, relied on fear-based messaging, and ultimately eroded public trust in health institutions.
The ad campaign produced such headlines as this one from Texas Public Radio: “Reducing Vaccine Hesitancy Is Worth More Than $1 Billion …” and this from Newsmax: ‘Ruddy: Biden’s Good Job on the Vaccine‘.
In October 2024, the waning days of the Biden-Harris regime, the committee’s scathing 113-page report found that the CDC “had inconsistent and flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks,” “consistently overstated the risk of Covid-19 to children” and still “continues to recommend Covid-19 vaccines for all Americans ages six months and older, which has made the United States a global outlier in Covid-19 policy.”
The New York Post noted at the time: “That’s 20 times more than the $45 million spent on an ad campaign by the National Institutes of Health to promote its National Cancer Institute in 2012 — and roughly 40 times the whole communications budget that same year for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
As the GOP-led committee was investigating the Biden-Harris ad blitz aimed at those who were hesitant to get the jab, the CDC began to “edit and erase” many of the video ads from its YouTube channel, the report noted.
Those videos, none of which remain available to the public, “used scaremongering to browbeat the unvaccinated into believing that taking the shot was the only way to return to pre-pandemic norms,” The Post noted.
A June 16, 2021, ad script read: “Say yes. Say yes to seeing friends. Yes to hanging out. Yes to vacations. Yes to sleepovers. After a year of saying no, imagine how good yes is going to feel. Everyone 12 and older is now eligible for COVID vaccines.”
Fors Marsh’s own internal surveys found that by March 2022 that between 60% and 76% of parents with unvaccinated kids younger than 18 had concerns about side effects that were not sufficiently answered.
Even after a majority of the U.S. population had gotten the injection by June 2022, the Biden-Harris ad blitz was pushing for children as young as 6 months old to be given the jab.
Another ad from the campaign threatened: “It doesn’t really matter if your child’s completely healthy, because some children will have the sniffles, maybe signs like the flu; fever, runny nose, or body aches. But others will end up in the hospital and end up there for a long time.”
The vast majority of the millions of children who were infected with Covid presented with mild, cold-like symptoms or remained completely asymptomatic.
Johns Hopkins found that the lockdowns, school closures, and social isolation led to documented disruptions in early communication, social development, and mental health.
The Biden-Harris HHS masking crusade was also a crucial part of the ad campaign and continued even after the rollout of shots in 2021.
A radio ad that aired in March 2021 implored listeners: “I know we need to keep up everything we’re already doing — masking up, keeping that 6-foot distance, and avoiding crowds.”
The all-out masking effort by the most prominent public health figure of the pandemic — Anthony Fauci — had the worst effect on schoolchildren, according to the committee’s report.
Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers said in a statement that federal agencies spent nearly $1 billion “trying to manipulate Americans with advertisements — sometimes containing erroneous or unproven information.”
“By overpromising what the Covid-19 vaccines could do — in direct contradiction of the FDA’s authorizations — and over emphasizing the virus’s risk to children and young adults,” she added, “the Biden-Harris administration caused Americans to lose trust in the public health system.”
