Former Baltimore health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen suggested President Joe Biden push the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the bird flu vaccine, which Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) quickly criticized.
At the moment there are 66 human cases of bird flu across the nation. Wen expressed concern on Face the Nation Sunday that it could spread further without an authorized vaccine.
“There actually is a vaccine developed already against H5N1. The Biden administration has contracted with manufacturers to make almost 5 million doses of the vaccine. However, they have not asked the FDA to authorize the vaccine. There’s research done on it,” Wen said. “They could get this authorized now and also get the vaccine out to farmworkers and vulnerable people. I think that’s the right approach.”
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“We don’t know what the Trump administration will be doing around bird flu if they have people coming in with anti-vaccine stances, could they hold off authorizations?” Wen said.
Wen’s comments caught attention on X where several opponents to the idea of a bird flu vaccine issued criticisms.
“Hell no,” Van Orden responded to the clip.
“Let me guess, experimental MRNA ‘vaccines’?” New Hampshire State Rep. James Spillane wrote.
“They’re trying to make bird flu a thing right before Trump’s inauguration,” the LibsofTikTok account wrote.
“Zero chance I’ll be complying with any bird flu lockdown or mandate. You?” another account wrote and received over 9,000 likes.
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Earlier this year, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, voiced his own opposition to the vaccine, suggesting, “Why would you need this vaccine, unless you expected a much more virulent virus to appear which had mysteriously gained the ability to spread between humans? Will there be another lab-derived pandemic? Not on my watch!”
There have been fewer than 100 human cases of bird flu since 2022.