On Wednesday’s CNN Newsroom, purported CNN “fact-checker” Daniel Dale was a little irked by some naughty “right-wing commentators” and “people on the right” for spreading misinformation around the internet about COVID-19 deaths and comorbidities. But the kicker is that the misinformation originally started with a piece of video poorly edited and aired by ABC News during last Friday’s Good Morning America.
“ABC news cut out 22 seconds of comments, cut them out of the comments made by CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky about the role of comorbidities in COVID-19 deaths,” announced co-host, Victor Blackwell, at the top of the segment. “Turns out though, those were crucially important seconds in terms of context.”
Before we get into Dale’s wailing, let’s look at what was in those “crucially important seconds.” (the bolded text is what they ended up cutting):
WALENSKY: A really important study, if I may just summarize it, a study of 1.2 million people who were vaccinated between December and October, and demonstrated that severe disease occurred in about 0.015 percent of the people who were received their primary series and death in .003 percent of those people.
The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with. And yes, really encouraging news in the context of omicron. This means not only just to get your primary series but to get your booster series. And yes, we're really encouraged by these results.
And here’s what ABC aired, notice they cut out the first half of Walensky’s answer:
CECILIA VEGA (chief White House correspondent): This new study just how well vaccines are working to prevent severe illness, given that, is it time to start rethinking how we're living with this virus, that it's potentially here to stay.
WALENSKY: The overwhelming number of deaths, 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities. So really, these were people who were unwell to begin with. And yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron. This means not only just to get your primary series but to get your booster series. And yes, we're really encouraged by these results.
After quickly noting that ABC had cut out some of what Walensky said, Dale huffed that “some right-wing commentators cut down the comments even further to just 11 out-of-context seconds and described her comments falsely.”
Picking on a tweet from radio and TV host Clay Travis, Dale note he wrote “The CDC director just said over 75 percent of COVID deaths occurred in people with at least four comorbidities,” then whined: “this is not actually what Walensky said, as you’ll hear in a moment.”
Travis’s video only included Walensky saying, “The overwhelming number of deaths, 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities”
“So once again, Alisyn [Camerota] and Victor, the full comments show Walensky did not say what a bunch of people on the right are claiming,” he griped after playing her full comments.
Despite ABC’s edited video being responsible for the spawning of commentary from the right, Dale’s criticisms of ABC were an afterthought. “[T]hey released the full footage, as I said, on Monday, and at the end of the full footage, they put in a text note saying that the Friday footage on TV had been edited they said for time reasons,” he recalled just before the end of the segment.
Daniel Dale’s vindictive fact-checking was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from ADT Security Services and Humana. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN Newsroom
January 12, 2022
2:56:06 p.m. EasternVICTOR BLACKWELL: ABC news cut out 22 seconds of comments, cut them out of the comments made by CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky about the role of comorbidities in COVID-19 deaths. Turns out though, those were crucially important seconds in terms of context. So, let's listen to the Walensky sound, first, the edited version.
[Cuts to video]
CECILIA VEGA: This new study just how well vaccines are working to prevent severe illness, given that, is it time to start rethinking how we're living with this virus, that it's potentially here to stay.
DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY (CDC director): The overwhelming number of deaths, 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities. So really, these were people who were unwell to begin with. And yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron. This means not only just to get your primary series but to get your booster series. And yes, we're really encouraged by these results.
[Cuts back to live]
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Okay. So that poorly edited clip created this tidal wave of misinformation. CNN reporter and resident fact-checker Daniel Dale did a deep dive on this. So, Daniel, how did this happen and then how was it seized upon?
DANIEL DALE: So, there were two separate problems here that resulted in a lot of people getting a false impression of what the CDC director said.
Number one, as Victor pointed out, ABC’s Good Morning America deleted some key sentences from Walensky, just did not air them. ABC says it did this for time reasons, but regardless, that edit made the meaning less clear. Number two, some right-wing commentators cut down the comments even further to just 11 out-of-context seconds and described her comments falsely.
Now, one false tweet came from radio and TV host Clay Travis. Travis wrote, “The CDC director just said over 75 percent of COVID deaths occurred in people with at least four comorbidities.” But this is not actually what Walensky said, as you’ll hear in a moment.
When she talked about more than 75 percent of people having four or more comorbidities, she was not discussing all 800,000-plus COVID deaths, rather, she was talking about a particular small group of deaths that were described in a new study.
Now, that study looked at 1.2 million fully vaccinated people. Of those 1.2 million fully vaccinated people, just 36 of them had a death associated with COVID-19, and of those 36 people who died, 28 of them, about 78 percent or over 75 percent, had four or more risk factors for having a severe COVID outcome.
Those risk factor include things like being older than 65, having a variety of significant chronic illnesses. Now, the CDC has been very clear since 2020 that people with health conditions are at higher COVID risk than people without them. Contrary to Travis's conspiratorial suggestion, this hasn't been hidden until now. But again, Walensky was not saying that 75 percent of all U.S. COVID deaths were among people with four or more comorbidities.
Now after this controversy erupted on Monday, ABC finally released Walensky’s full comments online, adding back the key sentences they left out of the TV segment on Good Morning America on Friday. Listen to her actual comment.
[Cuts to video]
WALENSKY: A really important study, if I may just summarize it, a study of 1.2 million people who were vaccinated between December and October, and demonstrated that severe disease occurred in about 0.015 percent of the people who were received their primary series and death in .003 percent of those people.
The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with. And yes, really encouraging news in the context of omicron. This means not only just to get your primary series but to get your booster series. And yes, we're really encouraged by these results.
[Cuts back to live]
DALE: So once again, Alisyn and Victor, the full comments show Walensky did not say what a bunch of people on the right are claiming.
CAMEROTA: And Daniel, has ABC has loudly and fully corrected the record now?
DALE: No. What they did was, they released the full footage, as I said, on Monday, and at the end of the full footage, they put in a text note saying that the Friday footage on TV had been edited they said for time reasons. But when I asked them for comment, they didn't provide any, they just said take a look at the note.
CAMEROTA: Daniel Dale, thank you very much for explaining all of this.
