As the United States has struggled to fully vaccinate its population, Fox News has aired a continued stream of coverage that has undermined the vaccine effort. Fox pushed a claim undermining vaccines during 99% of the days in the past six months despite the effectiveness of the vaccines at stopping death and serious illness from COVID-19 and the higher rate of deaths and hospitalizations among the unvaccinated.
Throughout the pandemic, Fox News has consistently undermined public health efforts to protect people from COVID-19.
Despite some highly publicized support for vaccination from select Fox hosts and a vaccine mandate for the network’s staffers, Fox’s coverage has continued to undermine public health officials, calling for “civil disobedience” to vaccine requirements, pushing unsubstantiated claims about deaths from vaccines, and pushing dangerous alternative medical treatments to the coronavirus.
As unvaccinated COVID-19 patients continue to push hospital capacity to the limit in many areas of the country, Fox’s war on vaccines has had terrible consequences for its viewers, who have been less likely to get vaccinated.
