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Molly Butler / Media Matters

Fox News employs its own familiar anti-vaccine tactics to attack COVID booster shots

Written by Alicia Sadowski & Jane Lee

Research contributions from Rebecca Martin

Published

With the majority of the U.S. population vaccinated against COVID-19 and public health experts warning that new variants might necessitate additional booster shots, Fox News personalities and guests have pivoted to attacking boosters as the network’s latest way of undermining the Biden administration’s public health policy. 

Fox continually fails its viewers by prioritizing right-wing narratives like relentlessly undermining the vaccination effort (despite the network’s own strict vaccine and testing requirements), dismissing public health warnings about dangerous variants, and promoting supposed miracle cures instead of providing accurate health information. 

Consequently, it should come as no surprise that when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded its recommendation on booster doses for “everyone ages 18 and older” amid the emergence of the omicron variant, Fox reverted back to its familiar tactics of: 

  • Undermining trust in public health officials.
  • Arguing that boosters are about politics rather than science, or that they will be used as a form of government control. 
  • Suggesting boosters are a nefarious plot by Big Pharma to drive up profits. 
  • Misrepresenting scientific evidence and/or fearmongering about vaccine side effects to discourage boosters.
  • Blaming boosters for vaccine hesitancy (instead of acknowledging the network’s own role). 

These practices have consequences — a recent NPR study cited “political polarization and misinformation” to explain the fact that “counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden.”

Here are just some examples of Fox News’ hosts, personalities, and guests undermining COVID-19 vaccine boosters:

Select a narrative

  • Undermining trust in public health officials

    • Fox prime-time host Laura Ingraham mocked the need for COVID-19 boosters against new variants of the disease: “The variants. It's like lions and tigers and bears and variants, oh my!” Frequent Fox guest Dr. Harvey Risch claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s primary “message” is to “sell the vaccines at any cost for everyone.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 4/19/21]
    • Ingraham suggested that public health experts are “just making it up at this point” as they begin to recommend “the third, and then there will be the fourth, fifth, sixth seasonal boosters.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/16/21]
    • On Fox’s Gutfeld!, guest Jimmy Failla attacked Fauci and vaccine mandates: “This idea that he's out there telling you that there is a waning immunity from this vaccine, we know there is a finite amount of time that it's effective in your body, yet we’re going to fire people from 30-year professions for not taking it, you know what I mean? Hey, Fauci, go fuck yourself.” [Fox News, Gutfeld!, 11/17/21]
    • Host Sean Hannity warned that Fauci “got literally every single solitary thing on COVID wrong” and after recommending a booster, he will suggest “probably 10 more boosters after that.” [Fox News, Hannity, 12/2/21]
    • Host Steve Hilton also undermined Fauci’s encouragement of boosters: “Now, it's all about the boosters — whatever the question, the answer is get boosted. What time is it? Time to get your booster. What's for lunch? A booster. What do you want for Christmas? Another booster.” [Fox News, The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton, 12/5/21]
    • Fox host Laura Ingraham warned her audience, “Spoiler alert: Fauci and friends will almost certainly push yearly boosters” for COVID-19 amid omicron variant surges. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 12/13/21]
    • Fox host Will Cain compared public health response to viruses to UFOs: “I joke but you know that if Dr. Fauci was in charge his response to UFOs would be, probably going to need a booster.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 12/14/21]
    • Cain dismissed colleges mandating boosters as “nonsense” and complained that Fauci was moving goalposts, “How long before we need a double booster and a triple booster?” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 12/17/21]

  • Arguing that boosters are about politics rather than science, or that they will be used as a form of government control

    • Fox News Primetime hosted “COVID contrarian” Alex Berenson to warn the audience that the United States is “heading toward a dark place” as “annual or even more frequent booster shots” will be mandated for young people. [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 7/23/21]
    • Host Laura Ingraham accused Democrats of encouraging boosters and other public health measures because “COVID is their excuse to do everything that they couldn't push through in the normal legislative process in prosperous and happy times.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 7/29/21]
    • Ingraham also suggested public health experts would not be “satisfied” until “105% of Americans get the vaccine” and they can institute “booster shots forever,” claiming that “the Democrats would try to keep the COVID hysteria going right into … the midterms.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/9/21]
    • Host Will Cain said that the Biden administration’s push for boosters is an example of “anti-science tyranny,” claiming that “the push for a third shot is not science, it is proclamation. It is an edict by experts.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 8/18/21] 
    • Host Greg Gutfeld warned: “And we're going to end up doing booster shots. But we can't let this creeping authoritarianism continue because I'm watching people accept it. Like, they're accepting it. That's more frightening than the disease.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/25/21]
    • Host Tammy Bruce suggested that booster shots are an example of “more medical tyranny in your everyday life” as Democrats continue to push “the perpetual, profitable pandemic” to gain “more control of your day-to-day life.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/3/21]
    • Ingraham included COVID-19 booster shots as an example of America entering a “new normal, which is a medical police state, essentially.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/7/21]
    • Host Jesse Watters fearmongered that “the pandemic could go on forever”: “It’s booster after booster, it never ends — permanent pandemic, permanent emergency power.” [Fox News, The Five, 9/10/21]
    • Host Pete Hegseth accused CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky of pushing “science to the side” to “follow politics instead” in her endorsement of Pfizer booster shots, claiming that the government was pushing boosters because it had “already spent your tax dollars” on them. Hegseth continued, warning, “These boosters aren't mandated — yet. But don't forget that today's ‘you may’ becomes tomorrow's ‘you must.’” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/24/21]
    • Ingraham warned, “We're going to be talking about mandating boosters long, long, long into the future, or Republicans win in a landslide and finally, we do get back to normal.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/7/21]
    • Ingraham guest Dr. Christopher Rake suggested that resisting vaccine and booster mandates is “our generation’s World War II, maybe it’s the World War III”: “I think it’s the greatest human rights violation of our time to say that the government can inject you with these things. … You better take your third shot, you better take your fourth shot. Where does this stop?” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/11/21]
    • Cain complained about the “rabbit hole” of booster shots, adding that we are living “under a regime of vaccine mandates.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 10/18/21]
    • Guest and right-wing commentator Tim Pool fearmongered that the vaccine mandate will evolve into “a social credit system of sorts'' and enable “a lot of creepy surveillance.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 10/22/21]
    • Fox’s Brian Kilmeade said the CDC discussing booster shots is “proof” that “the mandates are never going to end.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 10/25/21]
    • Ingraham warned that the vaccine mandate has no end date: “In other words, submit now and you could be facing boosters and masks forever. Biden is simply using OSHA to advance his own public health agenda.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/4/21]
    • Gutfeld questioned when a booster shot every three to four months would become “mandatory,” calling it a “slippery slope.” [Fox News, Gutfeld!, 11/12/21]
    • Host Tucker Carlson suggested that policies to incentivize vaccinations and boosters will mean “a lot more spying on you” and warned that “the CDC is now a kind of intelligence agency.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 12/1/21]
    • Bruce said that encouraging individuals to be “double vaccinated” in addition to boosters is based in “not science” but “insanity” to “condition people into having every aspect of their daily lives controlled by faceless bureaucratic cult.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 12/9/21]
    • Cain complained that Democrats are using the omicron variant “as a justification to bring back all of the height of the pandemic rules” and “of course, of course, more shots.” His guest Dr. Scott Atlas suggested that encouraging boosters suggests “a lack of critical thinking” as he warned it would lead to “every three months, ad infinitum forever.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 12/13/21]

  • Suggesting boosters are a nefarious plot by Big Pharma to drive up profits

    • Fox’s Laura Ingraham said “another benefit to keeping this crisis going” is because of “the hundreds of billions of dollars set to be made on the continued production of these vaccines and then booster vaccine shots to follow.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 5/5/21]
    • Ingraham suggested that the discussion of “yearly boosters” is rooted in the cost of vaccines, saying, “That’s billions of dollars — people do a lot for billions of dollars.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 5/10/21]
    • Host Will Cain suggested that his audience should “put ‘following the science’ aside for a moment” and “instead follow the money” when considering the need for a booster. “And if you do that, you’ll find that the so-called experts within Big Pharma, well, they’re the ones leading the booster shot discussion,” Cain added. “So with Big Pharma set to make beaucoup bucks off of the vaccine, they’re the ones pushing it? That’s pretty interesting.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 5/20/21]
    • Ingraham suggested that booster shots are “all about a constant stream of money that the drug companies make from the vaccines” that will entrap children into having “to get booster shots forever.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 5/20/21]
    • Host Mark Steyn suggested that boosters are a cynical moneymaking scheme between China and Big Pharma: “Pfizer is perfectly upfront that they’re in this for the money, they made however many big bucks from the first two shots. So, they're saying, oh, yes, now unfortunately, Chairman Xi [Jinping] has come up with a very interesting double mutation of the Ukrainian variant. And we think we should have a third shot for that. And the government says, yes, sure, what do you think this one will be — $40 a shot, $70 a shot, name your price.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 7/8/21]
    • Cain dismissed the need for booster shots: “Big Pharma isn’t following science, it’s following the money and making an absolute killing off these vaccines.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 8/17/21]
    • Fox’s Lawrence Jones said Moderna supports boosters because the company makes more money and “the pharmaceutical company and the White House, they are coordinating and it seems more about politics and, in some cases, making money than serving the patients.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/16/21]
    • Ingraham suggested that the CEO of Pfizer was pushing boosters because he had a “vested interest in saying that about every nine months.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/9/21]
    • Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked if the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of booster shots for all adults is “about money.” Guest Dr. Scott Atlas responded: “To give people boosters, even vaccines, with an experimental technology for a disease that they have almost no risk from for serious illness is simply contrary to the science. Boosters, there's no significant safety data on boosters, zero.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 11/21/21]
    • Host Pete Hegseth claimed that the left is “turning up the fear meter to max” about the omicron variant “so Big Pharma can jump back into the mix, pushing yet another round of boosters.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 11/29/21]
    • Host Tucker Carlson warned that the omicron variant would require “at least” a third shot on “Pfizer’s orders.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 11/30/21]
    • Ingraham’s discredited guest Dr. Byram Bridle falsely warned that booster shots “coming to America” are “not about the science” but represent “a gross amount of profit” for Big Pharma. Ingraham agreed, adding that it represents “a new type of tyranny and it’s getting worse by the day.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 12/9/21]

  • Misrepresenting scientific evidence and/or fearmongering about vaccine side effects to discourage boosters

    • Host Laura Ingraham claimed that public health policy is about “pushing more vaccines, like more booster shots,” rather than based on scientific evidence. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 2/25/21]
    • Host Will Cain suggested there is support for vaccine booster shots not because the “science backs it up,” but because the vaccine “has come to represent a political ideal, a political signifier, a political fight on which you think you can win and claim the banner of science.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 5/20/21]
    • Ingraham preceded a segment about Pfizer applying for an emergency use authorization for a booster shot by highlighting “a horrific story” of a woman suffering a brain hemorrhage after vaccination, saying, “And now, we’re going for a third shot — what’s going on?” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 7/8/21]
    • Ingraham complained that the vaccine and booster discussion “never ends” and said it demonstrated the media encouraging “perpetual panic by cherry-picking and often using incorrect data.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/12/21]
    • Host Tucker Carlson questioned the need for booster shots: “Well, what are the booster shots? What's the science behind them? What side effects do they cause? Are they necessary? Why are they necessary? What is going on?” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/19/21]
    • Ingraham again brought on serial COVID misinformer Dr. Byram Bridle to claim that the vaccines are “driving the emergence of highly evasive — highly immuno-evasive new variants.” Bridle added, “I believe it is the vaccines themself that are driving the variants, if anything — not those who are unvaccinated.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/24/21]
    • Frequent Ingraham guest Dr. Jay Bhattacharya argued against the efficacy of boosters: “And no matter how many boosters you do, we do not have a technology that will stop the spread of COVID.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/30/21]
    • Ingraham downplayed the role boosters can play in mitigating the spread of coronavirus: “It's a virus and it's going to virus.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/8/21]
    • Guest Will Cain said members of the Biden administration are not following the science because they have “dedicated themselves to the booster shots before science could get there.” Host Lawrence Jones added, “We know they’re not following the science. Do we continue to just take this and act like this is the new normal, or do we rise up instead?” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/17/21]
    • Carlson claimed that the FDA panel’s rejection of Pfizer booster shots meant “they are too dangerous to give to everybody” and accused the Biden administration of pushing booster shots anyway “because they have a political objective — not a scientific one, not a public health objective.” In reality, the FDA panel recommended the booster shot in September for adults 65 years and older and those at high risk of severe COVID-19, like health care workers. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/17/21]
    • Fox’s Steve Hilton accused Democrats of screwing up the vaccine “handed” to them by Trump “with chaos over boosters and their insane anti-science imbecilities about protecting the already vaccinated.” [Fox News, The Next Revolution, 9/26/21]
    • Guest host Charles Payne said natural immunity doesn’t get “proper due diligence from our government” for political reasons because “they are so vested in these vaccines, even getting ahead of the FDA and the science on the booster shot.” [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 9/27/21]
    • Ingraham dismissed the need for COVID-19 booster shots by arguing there are no rubella or smallpox boosters. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/4/21]
    • Carlson introduced a segment claiming that California Gov. Gavin Newsom hadn’t been seen in public since getting his COVID-19 booster shot by mockingly saying the booster is “probably totally unrelated.” The governor was seen in public days earlier attending a wedding, and his office said in a statement that Newsom had worked in the Californian Capitol with staff the week prior. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 11/8/21]
    • Fox anchor Bill Hemmer also spread the baseless anti-vaccine rumor about the California governor’s low public profile following his booster. [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 11/10/21]
    • Ingraham guest Dr. Harvey Risch said there’s no need for everyone to get booster shots: “The arguments for boosters are the same as the original arguments for vaccination, which is if somebody is high risk, then there is a discussion as to whether it is a risk or benefit to do the boosters. That’s it. There’s no benefit for low-risk people to get the boosters.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/15/21]
    • Fox medical contributor Dr. Marty Makary downplayed the need for boosters, saying they “are not supported by the data for young people, they're not supported for those with natural immunity.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 11/22/21]
    • Carlson emphasized the “mild” nature of the omicron variant to dismiss public health measures, including Biden’s calls to get a third dose of the vaccine. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 11/29/21]
    • Ingraham accused Democrats of using the omicron variant to push boosters and “embrace more mandates,” saying people will have to “line up for the endless boosters that may or may not work.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/29/21]
    • Ingraham then hosted Dr. Houman Hemmati, who dismissed the vaccine as an attempted “magic bullet against the virus” and compared COVID-19 to the common cold to argue that vaccinating against rapidly mutating viruses was pointless. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/29/21]
    • Guest Alex Berenson claimed that “we know vaccinations fail in a matter of months against infection and transmission after the second dose,” citing Moderna’s effort creating a new booster for the omicron variant as evidence. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 11/30/21]
    • Ingraham and guest Dr. Peter McCullough hyped natural immunity to argue against the need for booster shots as the show’s chyron warned that “regular boosters are coming.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/30/21]
    • Fox anchor Martha MacCallum highlighted a single study that indicated so-called “natural immunity” from previous infection could provide “even better protection than vaccines and boosters.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 12/1/21]
    • Referencing the Biden administration encouraging COVID booster shots, his guest Dr. Marty Makary asked, “Does our C.D.C. work for Big Pharma or does it work for the American people?” Host Tucker Carlson responded that media outlets need to “tearfully apologize for reading Pfizer talking points in place of science.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 12/14/21]
    • Dr. Makary also fearmongered about potential vaccine side effects and discouraged anyone not “at risk” from getting a booster shot: “There's no data to support boosters in young people[.] ... Boosters can and vaccines can cause myocarditis at a rate higher than the virus itself. So, there will be unintended harm to an indiscriminate booster requirement at colleges and universities.” Makary repeated these claims on Fox’s other straight news programs throughout the day. [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 12/16/21]

  • Blaming boosters for vaccine hesitancy

    • Fox medical contributor Dr. Marty Makary criticized discussions of boosters because “if you tell someone they're going to need this booster every six months, they may be less likely to take the initial vaccine.” [Fox News, Fox News @ Night, 4/28/21]
    • Host Tucker Carlson suggested that encouraging boosters is “scaring the hell out of people” and “shaking the faith that most Americans” had in the vaccine. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 7/8/21]
    • Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade: The government makes “people doubt because they look at this timing and they say wait a second, does it really get full FDA approval? Is it really — do we really need a booster shot?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/24/21]
    • Host Sean Hannity complained that the Biden administration and public health officials “keep changing everything every single day, no mask, one mask, two masks, vax or mask, now, it's vaxxed and masked — now, it's vax, mask, and add a booster to it,” and blamed them for vaccine hesitancy. (He has repeated this sentiment on his Fox prime-time show many times since.) [Fox News, Hannity, 9/10/21]
    • Host Steve Hilton and Fox contributor Tammy Bruce blamed distrust of vaccines on medical experts for conflicting information about booster shots, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and the delta variant, while the chyron claimed, “Biden admin sending wrong message on vaccines.” [Fox News, The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton, 10/3/21]
    • Fox anchor Shannon Bream questioned when “the limit on boosters” will be reached, with Dr. Hooman Noorchashm responding that we should be vaccinating based on immunity. [Fox News, Fox News @ Night, 10/30/21]
    • Kilmeade claimed that his vaccination card expires in three months and he might potentially be recommended more booster shots: “Now I’m going every three months to go — now we’ve got a booster, now we have a designed booster that could be coming for the omicron variant? People are getting a little worried about it.” [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 12/2/21]
    • Kilmeade complained about boosters amid omicron variant surge contributing to COVID fatigue: “Moderna is working on an omicron vaccine for a runny nose and a low fever, that's a fourth shot on top of a booster and then if there’s another variant we are going to be running to a – we are going to be getting a shot every three weeks." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 12/6/21]
    • Fox host Sean Hannity undermined vaccines: “‘What's the big deal?’ Well, the vaccinated, they're getting COVID too, and just a little vaccine mandate, then a booster, then another booster, then more boosters, then vaccine passports, and five-year-olds need to get their shots; mask mandates are back, draconian measures forever and ever and ever, no end in sight.” [Fox News, Hannity, 12/15/21]
    • Carlson attacked colleges for halting in-person learning in response to the omicron variant and accused them of not believing that the COVID-19 vaccine works: “If you don't get a booster shot, you're banned from campus. If you don't get your third vaccination of a vaccine that hasn't yet worked, you're banned. Does that make sense? It makes zero sense.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 12/17/21]