We Can Do This: An Assessment of the Department of Health and Human Services’ COVID-19 Public Health Campaign

To the surprise of no one, the recently released House Energy and Commerce report on the approximately one billion dollar “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” (IDIQ) federal contract awarded by the Biden/Harris Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the “Beltway Bandit” Fors Marsh Group (FMG) has received approximately no coverage by corporate media - and hardly on social media, for that matter. The notable exception being the New York Post.

The report documents that what Fors Marsh Group delivered to HHS for the 991M $ in taxpayer dollars it received was to deploy a massive Psychological Warfare campaign on American Citizens, one which employed a wide range of proven disinformation. Disinformation as defined by spreading falsehoods for political purposes. Those following along closely will recall that the Mayorkas Department of Homeland Security defined the spreading of disinformation during the COVIDcrisis as domestic terrorism.

As previously discussed in an April 18, 2023 essay on this substack titled “Fifth Gen Warfare, Part 3”, this directly relates to the case of the separate “CDC Foundation”-funded “Public Goods Projects” “Shots Heard Round the World”/”Team Halo” gangstalking program that targeted physicians and scientists who contradicted the COVID propaganda and false narratives being spread by HHS agencies and contractor Fors Marsh; illegal for citizens to spread mis- dis- and malinformation or to internet stalk others, but apparently not for government contractors. The recent Energy and Commerce report does not investigate these activities sponsored by the CDC Foundation, which is functionally a congressionally-authorized CDC slush fund capitalized by Pharma and a variety of non-governmental organizations such as the Gates Foundation. Gang and crowdstalking is a federal crime and is also a crime in most if not all states.

According to its website, the CDC Foundation is “the sole entity created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s critical health protection work.” According to its website, Shots Heard is an ongoing initiative under The Public Good Projects (PGP), a “public health nonprofit specializing in large-scale media monitoring programs, social and behavior change interventions, and cross-sector initiatives.”

Another of PGP’s initiatives is the Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC), which sits within the CDC Foundation—a nonprofit arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established by Congress.

The goal of the communications collaborative, according to PGP, is to decrease misinformation and increase vaccine demand worldwide. And it’s using social media influencers to silence vaccine detractors. PGP is headquartered in New York and was founded in 2013. Its current CEO is Dr. Joe Smyser, who holds a Ph.D. and master’s in public health and completed his postdoctoral training at the CDC.

The Tennessee Department of Health states about Smyser and PGP, “Dr. Smyser has designed some of the United States’ most influential and impactful health campaigns to date in partnership with the CDC, FDA, Kaiser Permanente, Rockefeller, and Humana.”

Here is a brief clip of NY Post coverage regarding this recent report, to provide additional context:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spent $911 million of taxpayer money on a massive COVID-19 vaccination promotion campaign that lied about masking, vaccines and boosters — and “consistently overstated” the risk of the virus to children, according to a shocking House committee report.

The GOP-led House Energy and Commerce panel released a scathing, 113-page document Wednesday about the most significant public health missteps, fibs and cover-ups from HHS and its subagency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“CDC’s guidance, which the Campaign relied on, went beyond the terms of FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to state, without evidence, that COVID vaccines were highly effective against transmission,” the report states. “This ultimately had a negative impact on vaccine confidence and the CDC’s credibility when proven untrue.”

It also states 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.”

<As I predicted long ago would happen… This blowback was readily anticipated by anyone with a modicum of independent thought capacity. As predicted, the entire vaccine enterprise, the CDC, the FDA, clinical research, medical ethics, academic medicine, the Pharmaceutical industry, and public health in general have all taken huge hits in public confidence and support. Much of which was long past due and well deserved. But will there be consequences? Reforms? Will anyone be held accountable? Most of this occurred under the Biden/Harris administration. Please make your own political analyses and predictions. I have become so wary and skeptical (and battle-scarred) that I only foresee more of the same in the future.>

Carrying on from the NY Post (which did a great job with its in-depth reporting):

HHS shelled out $911,174,285 to the behavior change research and strategy firm Fors Marsh for the multimedia advertising campaign between August 2020 and June 2023.

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).

The “We Can Do This” campaign kicked off as the final stages of Operation Warp Speed vaccine trials wound down — and then-Democratic vice presidential nominee and California Sen. Kamala Harris sowed doubt about their efficacy.

“I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump, and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about,” she told CNN of Operation Warp Speed in September 2020. “I will not take his word for it.” 

Nevertheless, Harris and President Biden’s administration went on to spread unreliable information about “vaccine uptake, masking, social distancing and booster vaccine uptake,” much of which was based on CDC guidance.

As the House panel probed the campaign, the CDC began to “edit and erase” many of the video ads from its YouTube channel, the report noted.

None remain available to the public — and most used scaremongering to browbeat the unvaccinated into believing that taking the shot was the only way to return to pre-pandemic norms.

Of course, as cynics reading this might predict, a summary of the Fors Marsh campaign has been published in both an academic peer-reviewed journal and in Fors Marsh reports as an unqualified success.

See for example:

Segmentation and Optimization: FMG’s Data-Driven Approach to Building Vaccine Confidence

Evaluation of the "We Can Do This" Campaign Paid Media and COVID-19 Vaccination Uptake, United States, December 2020-January 2022

J Health Commun 2023 Sep 2;28(9):573-584.

doi: 10.1080/10810730.2023.2236976. Epub 2023 Aug 1.

Benjamin Denison 1, Heather Dahlen 1, Jae-Eun C Kim 1, Christopher Williams 1, Elissa Kranzler 1, Joseph N Luchman 1, Sarah Trigger 2, Morgane Bennett 2, Tyler Nighbor 2, Monica Vines 2, Elizabeth L Petrun Sayers 2, Allison N Kurti 2, Jessica Weinberg 2, Leah Hoffman 1, Joshua Peck 2

Affiliations

• 1Communication Campaign Research & Evaluation, Fors Marsh, Arlington, Virginia, USA.

• 2Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC, USA.

Abstract

Public education campaigns are promising methods for promoting vaccine uptake. In April 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the We Can Do This COVID-19 public education campaign. This study is one of the first evaluations of this COVID-19 public education campaign. We tested associations between channel-specific campaign exposure (i.e. digital, TV, radio, print, and out-of-home advertising) and COVID-19 first-dose vaccinations among a nationally representative online sample of 3,278 adults. The study introduces novel ways to simultaneously evaluate short- and long-term cumulative media dose, filling an important gap in campaign evaluation literature. We observed a positive, statistically significant relationship between the short-term change in digital media dose and the likelihood of first-dose vaccination, and a positive, statistically significant relationship between long-term cumulative TV dose and the likelihood of first-dose vaccination.

Results suggest that both digital and TV ads contributed to vaccination, such that digital media was associated with more immediate behavioral changes, whereas TV gradually shifted behaviors over time. As findings varied by media channel, this study suggests that public education campaigns should consider delivering campaign messages across multiple media channels to enhance campaign reach across audiences.

Those seeking to better understand the technology, language, and internal rationale (and rationalization) of PsyWar practitioners who practice their trade on the general public would be well served to read these accounts.

What is Fors Marsh?

With offices located at 4250 Fairfax Drive, 22201, Arlington Virginia, Fors Marsh is a certified B Corp that “conducts and implements research to solve complex challenges for public and private sector clients” by exploiting its core competencies in “market research, advertising, program evaluation, training, and customer experience solutions.”

For those unfamiliar with DC slang, “Beltway Bandit” refers to a consulting or research company that mostly works for US government departments or agencies, often specializing in defense, technology, or other areas. The term may also be used more broadly to describe any private business or political entity that operates inside the Beltway, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. For those familiar with the term “public-private partnerships” or PPP, this type of business relationship is at the core of the Fors Marsh business model.

According to the committee report:

In August 2020, as Operation Warp Speed (OWS) was in the final stages of vaccine trials, the HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA) initiated a COVID-19 public education campaign called the “We Can Do This” Campaign to shape the public’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including vaccine uptake, masking, social distancing and booster vaccine uptake. To execute this Campaign, ASPA awarded three task orders to FMG through the “Public Information and Communication Services II” (PICS II) contract vehicle. While ASPA initiated the Campaign, FMG adhered to COVID-19-related guidance and recommendations made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when developing content for the Campaign. An in-depth discussion of the Campaign’s launch, as well as its outreach and engagement strategies can be found in the Appendix. 

The “We Can Do This” Campaign’s primary goal was to increase public confidence in, and uptake of, the COVID-19 vaccine, including booster shots, among the American people. The Campaign also sought to “bolster optimism, counter despair, and bring people together” utilizing “[f]inely honed, timely messages [to] inspire confidence and mobilize a nation eager for normalcy to adopt behaviors that stem the spread of the virus and speed economic recovery.” To this end, the Campaign sought to address the “explosion of misinformation that feeds mistrust of scientific and public health communities, and of public servants throughout the ranks of government” by “influenc[ing] behaviors around COVID-19 and the seasonal flu and prepar[ing] for a safe and prosperous reopening.” 

Based on reports shared with the Committee, FMG spent on average over $20 million per month for the design and execution of the Campaign. In its proposal for the task order, the company asserted that it could benefit ASPA by using a strategic mix of paid and earned media with exclusive radio partnerships, research-based messaging, and reinforced messaging from trusted influencers, celebrities, and sports figures. FMG’s Campaign strategies were grounded in several theories of behavior change and communication, “with the expectation that exposure to Campaign messages prompts change in cognitions antecedent to Campaign-targeted behavior.” The health belief model, used by the Campaign, posits that “a person’s belief in a personal threat of an illness or disease together with a person’s belief in the effectiveness of the recommended health behavior or action will predict the likelihood the person will adopt the behavior.”

This last statement is a euphemism for Psychological Bioterrorism being used to train and shape Citizen behavior in ways sought by US Government bureaucrats, much like Pavlov training dogs to respond to a bell. HHS Paid Fors Marsh almost a billion taxpayer dollars to deploy and practice Psychological Bioterrorism on US Citizens for years. Let that sink in for a moment.

Utilizing protocols and practices from prior FDA and CDC-led public health campaigns for tobacco prevention and control, FMG and its partners created ads and designed outreach strategies that specifically targeted different demographic groups and population segments.13 In short, FMG planned to use CDC guidance, recommendations, and internal scientific research to create advertising material to convince the American people that COVID-19 posed a sufficient threat to them or their loved ones and that they should follow the government’s recommendations and mandates. To be credible, the underlying HHS and CDC scientific recommendations and guidance needed to be effective at reducing the risk of COVID-19. Moreover, HHS and CDC needed to themselves remain credible communicators to the public. 

To recap, this new report from the House Energy and Commerce Committee covers one aspect of a massive, unprecedented PsyWar campaign, funded by a combination of taxpayer and pharma/NGO dollars, which was waged against US Citizens, and was deployed as a “Whole of Government” campaign predominantly by the Biden/Harris administration. Examples of other aspects of this federal government-wide disinformation campaign include the role of the “intelligence community” and Department of Homeland Security (particularly as coordinated by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)). Many aspects of this campaign remain undisclosed or hidden in redactions to Freedom of Information requests. Still, their shadowy presence can be inferred from the documents often called “The Twitter Files” and “The Facebook Files.”

And among the many stunning truth bombs dropped throughout the report, one observation stands out above all others in my mind. The amazingly destructive school closure policies resulted from Teachers’ union lobbying of Dr. Rachel Walensky, former CDC director. The Teachers’ union is directly responsible for the “lost generation” of student teaching, which will now reverberate across the US and US industry for decades.

So what does this meticulously documented House report recommend?

• Congress should consider formally authorizing the CDC and clearly define the agency’s core mission. The CDC, unlike other major agencies, has never received full Congressional authorization. There is no single enabling statute that defines the agency’s overall mission and structure. The lack of authorization has blurred the lines on the agency’s responsibilities to lead on issues related to communicable disease, resulted in rampant mission creep, and has led many to question whether the CDC is able to execute on its primary mission of detecting and combatting public health threats, as evidenced by the CDC’s botched handling of the COVID-19 response. Congressional authorization should outline the agency’s core mission, delineate roles and responsibilities, and reevaluate its involvement in broad prevention initiatives outside the scope of the agency’s core mission, such as climate initiatives, as well as duplicative programs addressed by other agencies both inside and outside HHS. Congress should also consider whether to separate the CDC’s public health functions from its chronic disease research activities. <Who knew that the CDC was not formally authorized by Congress? This reeks of administrative state mission creep, of precisely the type addressed by the Supreme Court in the recent “Chevron Precedent” decision. If Congress did not authorize it, then who did? Well, I have a different take on this. Let’s take a shovel to this snake. As well as the Department of Education. Those two simple steps would take care of all sorts of different problems relating to what happened during the COVIDcrisis.>

• HHS and its agencies should abide by the FDA’s product labeling guidelines. HHS and its agencies should be barred from promoting information regarding an FDA-regulated product that does not reflect the FDA-approved label. FDA product labels are authorized or approved only after extensive review and play a major role in the presentation of safety and effectiveness information. Public health messaging by all HHS departments must abide by the product labeling guidelines and be barred from promoting messages that go beyond, or otherwise conflict with, the approved or authorized label for a vaccine, drug, or related product. In December of 2020, when the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine received EUA to be distributed in the U.S., the FDA press release explicitly stated “[a]t this time, data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.” Despite this disclosure, high ranking federal officials, including President Biden, knowingly made unsubstantiated claims about the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. These declarations continued even after breakthrough infections began to occur. The “pandemic of the vaccinated” motto was divisive and extremely damaging, as it led the public to believe unvaccinated individuals were the cause of continued viral transmission, when that simply was not true. A study published in October of 2021 by the University of California, Davis, found no significant difference in viral loads between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, which signaled COVID-19 vaccines did not prevent infection nor transmission. Moreover, the CDC enforced life-altering mandates on the public based on unsubstantiated claims. CDC and other federal officials must be held to the same standards as companies when it comes to promoting message about FDA authorized or approved products. 

• Congress should consider clarifying responsibility for evaluating the safety of vaccines and streamline existing reporting systems for capturing vaccine injuries and adverse reactions. There continues to be concerns over the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, including the risk of myocarditis and blood clots. The CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database is a passive surveillance system that does not establish a causal relationship between vaccine administration and the adverse event. VAERS reporting of COVID-19 vaccine injuries proved highly controversial. The FDA also monitors the safety of approved products through the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), MedWatch, and the Sentinel Initiative. When compared to VAERS, the FDA’s adverse events reporting systems appears to offer a more robust method of capturing adverse events that relies on both active and passive surveillance. Streamlining adverse events surveillance would avoid duplication and provide clear, reliable guidance on the emergence of vaccine and other related adverse events. HHS and its agencies should embrace a culture of transparency and accountability. There has been a growing body of evidence on the societal damage resulting from CDC-imposed mask and travel mandates, social distancing requirements, school closure guidance, and vaccine recommendations. In addition, the data supporting the benefits of such policies has been lacking throughout the pandemic and afterwards. Through the course of the pandemic and in the aftermath, one thing has become clear: the CDC did not operate in a culture of transparency. This must change. The agency must embrace transparency and be willing to admit what it does and does not know. The CDC must communicate clearly and honestly when its recommendations have been proven and when they are based on untested hypotheses. Instead of promulgating policy to inform the science, the agency must allow the science to promulgate the policy. To this end, the agency should establish procedures for conferring with public health bodies from local, state, and foreign governments and be willing to modify its policies based on emerging science and best practices recommended by outside experts at home and abroad. 

  As outlined in H.R.4529, the Public Health Guidance Transparency and Accountability Act of 2023, the CDC Director should be required to develop, establish, and maintain good guidance practices. These guidance documents must include public participation and be non-binding on the public and government. The agency should routinely update these best practices.

• The CDC and federal public health officials should not attempt to silence dissenting scientific opinions. Congress should safeguard medical and scientific debate from attempted during public health emergencies, and consider appropriate legislation consistent with the First Amendment. <And those whose reputations, careers, and peace of mind have been ground into the mud by these government-sponsored activities should be compensated for the damages done>

• HHS and its agencies should overhaul their website archival process to mimic that of prior White House administrations. Throughout the writing of this report, the CDC continued to edit and erase website content unannounced. The agency’s lack of notice to changes in its record keeping and poor archival process made it nearly impossible to track down former agency actions. While parts of CDC’s former COVID-19 health guidance have been preserved on its COVID-19 Museum Timeline—albeit the more favorable parts of such guidance—the CDC has also entirely erased and replaced unscientific guidance, blatant errors, and unfavorable press releases. During the writing of this report, HHS abruptly restricted public access to view its Campaign content that was previously widely available on YouTube. These videos are no longer accessible to the public. Such editing and erasing of guidance and web content on its government-controlled website, and making taxpayer funded Campaign videos inaccessible is unacceptable, particularly considering the historic and life-altering nature of the COVID-19 pandemic. HHS must ensure proper record-keeping of its website content that comports with the same archival process as prior White House administrations. <In other words, they should stop covering up their guilt and misdeeds by hiding the evidence>

How well did the Fors Marsh-CDC PsyWar Campaign work?

Now here comes the stunning part. Mostly buried in the appendix of the House Report. What did HHS get for its billion dollar Propaganda/PsyWar campaign?

Basically, it worked at the beginning, and then it backfired.

Those who resisted accepting the primary series of COVID genetic “vaccines” <I did not resist, and suffered serious adverse event consequences which continue to need medical treatment for my failure of judgement> and those who resisted the booster campaigns, who opted out of the school systems and homeschooled their children, those who refused to comply with the arbitrary and capricious lockdown, masking, and social distancing strategies, should congratulate themselves. They successfully resisted the force of a billion-dollar propaganda and psychological warfare campaign. And will probably be even more resistant to PsyWar and propaganda methods in the future.

From the report appendix:

FMG’s paid media strategy specifically targeted a subset of the population termed “the movable middle.” As applied to the Campaign, FMG described the movable middle as vaccine-hesitant Americans who had not yet decided whether to get a COVID-19 vaccine, as well as those who are part of hard-to-reach populations, or those actively seeking trusted information on vaccines. During the Campaign, the audience segments, which comprised the movable middle, changed based on population level data pertaining to vaccine uptake. To identify this group, FMG studied and categorized people based on demographics, such as age, ethnicity, life stage (e.g., parents of school-aged children), and location information (such as state and zip code). FMG’s online advertising strategy for these groups aimed to “layer demographics with digital behaviors, such as frequently consumed content[,] . . . identify the optimum media mix via comprehensive quantitative (editorial, contextual relevance) and qualitative (reach, frequency, efficiency) analysis of available media vehicles.”

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. The personas were developed based on information gathered through national geographic segmentation tools. FMG also used “journey mapping activities” to target vaccine hesitant populations. According to FMG documents, journey mapping activities involved “a simulated day-in-the-life analysis . . . to assess our target audience’s interaction with media, organizations, and trusted messengers in ways that get closest to actual observations and provide deeper insights than secondary data sets could alone.” 

Additionally, FMG used its public opinion surveys to monitor and track key information on vaccine hesitant parents. According to documentation obtained by the Committee, FMG “proactively proposed including the following elements in survey tools: monitoring of parental vaccine hesitancy, parental reporting of eligible child vaccine uptake, and booster uptake.”

Meanwhile, FMG’s Preparing the Nation (PTN) strategy focused on answering emerging questions about COVID-19 vaccines to decrease vaccine skepticism and correct misinformation. 

The PTN team closely collaborated with HHS officials to “regularly synthesize findings from Google search trends and monitor social listening tools, [weekly reports, trackers,] to recommend, develop, shepherd through clearance, and traffic a range of timely static and video ads, including paid search and paid social ads, on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, Google, and Bing.”

What do the resulting Data show?

This program failed.

The Committee’s review of survey results found, despite a comprehensive and expensive campaign, many Americans were largely unmoved in their opinions regarding CDC-recommended COVID-19 public health measures. Over and over, the Campaign’s survey findings showed little to no change in vaccine uptake or readiness among the public. In spite of heavy promotion, findings reveal vaccine uptake remained unchanged for nearly a year between August 2021 and June 2022. 

Similarly, survey results indicated there was little change in Americans’ willingness to get vaccinated over at least a six-month period between January and June 2022. 

Among unvaccinated adults, nearly half of all those surveyed remained unvaccinated due to concerns about the long-term side effects of the vaccines. Others remained concerned about the speed with which the vaccines were developed, their efficacy in preventing COVID infection and transmission, as well as mistrust of government motives in widely encouraging vaccines. 

By April 2022, 76 percent of unvaccinated adults said they would never get a COVID vaccine. 

Survey findings between January and June 2022 also reveal no significant change in booster uptake among fully vaccinated adults. 

Notably, survey findings also reveal that while the Campaign was ongoing, booster uptake peaked at 27 percent in November 2021 and gradually declined to 3 percent in March 2022.

FMG survey results showed that among vaccinated adults, booster uptake rates slowed for various reasons. The vast majority of vaccinated adults who had refused a booster shot did so because they did not want to keep getting doses. Still others cited natural immunity from prior COVID infections. Around 50 percent of those surveyed agreed the public health community disagreed about the necessity of booster shots. Around 40 percent of adults said the only way they would get a booster was if they were required to.

In Conclusion

What was done to us by our government during the COVIDcrisis was deeply, morally wrong. It was more than wrong, it was evil. It violated virtually every previously established principle of medical ethics. It sought to weaponize a falsely inflated risk of an infectious disease to promote fear of death, and then exploit that fear to shape behavior, reprogram our minds, and advance a series of financial, political and organizational objectives.

Modern Psychological Warfare technology is incredibly powerful. And like nuclear technology and genetic engineering, it must be reserved for very special and limited circumstances, and must be parsimoniously deployed with wisdom, caution, and oversight.

Instead, we had another example of the State acting like a three-year-old child with a hammer, in which everything becomes a nail.

I applaud the committee’s work and report. But they seem to have missed the big picture.

Biological terrorism is wrong. Governments willing and able to deploy PsyWar on their own citizens not only violate fundamental human rights to free speech, thought, emotion, but they violate fundamental agreements and consent between government and the governed. This technology completely destroys the social contract as well as personal sovereignty.

If we need further refinement of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, what is needed is not additional exceptions as Walz, Harris and Obama advocate. What we really need are further prohibitions on the State deploying these methods, which are based on modern psychological insights into human learning and emotion, on their own citizens.