Walensky said:

“I can tell you where I was when the CNN feed came that it was 95%
effective, the vaccine. So many of us wanted to be hopeful, so many of us
wanted to say, okay, this is our ticket out, right, now we’re done. So I
think we had perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good
things that came our way. I really do. I think all of us wanted this to be
done.

“Nobody said waning, when you know, oh this vaccine’s going to work. Oh
well, maybe it’ll work — (laughs) it’ll wear off.

“Nobody said what if the next variant doesn’t, it doesn’t, it’s not as
potent against the next variant.”

Walensky’s statement that she learned about vaccine effectiveness from “
the CNN feed” followed just days after it was revealed President Joe Biden
and other key political figures received COVID-related “talking points”
from the polling and public relations firm, Impact Research, which also
conducted polling for Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.