White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was not having any of Peter Doocy’s suggestion that vaccine mandates are to blame for stressed hospital systems dealing with the surge in coronavirus hospitalizations.
At issue was an anecdote that President Joe Biden told during a speech this week in which he described calling a hospital to ask about a friend’s difficulty in getting treated.
“And, by the way, I wasn’t complaining because they’re getting the living hell kicked out of them, by the way. Doctors and nurses, some of them are just — they’re running dry. I really mean it. They’re getting the living hell kicked out of them, and sometimes physically,” Biden said in his remarks on the importance of vaccine requirements.
“And to make a long story short, it took a while because all of the — not all — the vast majority of the emergency rooms and the docs were occupied taking care of COVID patients,” the president said.
At Friday’s briefing, Doocy first tried to characterize Biden’s concern as bigfooting other patients to help his friend, then suggested the hospital was stressed because of vaccine mandates. Psaki disputed both points:
DOOCY: Thank you. And then just one more topic, following up on his remarks yesterday: President Biden claims that he cold-called a Pennsylvania hospital to ask the desk receiving nurse why it was taking so long for a
good friend’s wife to be seen. What happened next?MS. PSAKI: Well, the context of why the President told this story — which I think is important, and I promise I’ll answer your question — is that he was expressing that hospitals, frontline workers, nurses, doctors in emergency rooms are still seeing and feeling the impact of the number of people who are unvaccinated who are filling beds in emergency rooms, ICUs, and it is preventing, in some cases, people who have other illnesses, who may be seeking treatment, who may be ha- — fearful of a heart attack, who — other people who might be going to the emergency room from getting the care that they need. I don’t have any other update for the privacy of this — this individual.DOOCY: But setting aside the privacy of the individual, how often does President Biden call around trying to help his friends cut the line?MS. PSAKI: That certainly was not his intention. He was not trying to do that. He was checking in on a friend.DOOCY: And do you know if this particular hospital might have been having staffing shortages because they have a vaccine mandate and maybe some folks have had to leave because they didn’t want to get vaccinated?MS. PSAKI: I would love for you to account for me where that is the issue at — over — more so than the number of unvaccinated who are fillingemergency rooms, filling ICU beds. That is the problem in hospitals across the country.
In fact, the White House released a detailed report this week showing the effectiveness of vaccine requirements, which also showed very few people refusing to comply.
Watch above via C-Span.