What To Expect When You’re Expecting Author Became Fauci’s Mouthpiece During COVID, Downplaying The Vaccine’s Potential Impact On Pregnant Women
For generations of American mothers, Heidi Murkoff’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting was the first book they bought when they found out they were pregnant. Today, the What To Expect brand has grown to include several books, a website, and an app, but it appears they’ve also expanded into spreading political propaganda related to the COVID vaccine.
What To Expect’s carefully cultivated trust with pregnant women became one of the most effective delivery systems for Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 vaccine messaging related to the vaccine’s impact on young children and pregnant women. They said that without a doubt, the shots were safe, necessary, and should be taken without delay by both mothers and their children.
However, the audience was never told that the very officials delivering this message had privately discussed a theoretical risk of miscarriage due to the vaccine. This scientifically based concern never surfaced in the warm, reassuring content the brand served to millions of expecting mothers.
In January 2021, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci texted CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and Vivek Murthy about a theoretical risk of the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant women. After consulting colleagues, Fauci wrote that the cytokine storm and fever common after the second dose of the COVID vaccine “theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”
Walensky’s response? “Definitely a good point.” Murthy agreed it was “a really good point.”
Related internal discussion noted that early vaccine studies had avoided the first trimester partly because of fever concerns and higher baseline miscarriage rates. The texts, recovered from Fauci’s government iPhone, were released this month by Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul.
Instead of telling pregnant women about the COVID-19 shot’s potential harm to pregnant women and their unborn children, the What to Expect Project became a plug-and-play megaphone for Fauci’s strongest possible safety claims.
Heidi Murkoff personally interviewed Dr. Fauci. On camera and in print, Fauci told her audience of pregnant women that there was “no indication whatsoever” of increased adverse issues among the tens of thousands of vaccinated pregnant women tracked by the CDC. “It’s really one of those things that’s kind of not a close call,” he assured them. “It really is pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated.”
Watch the What to Expect Project’s own video for yourself:
“Not a close call” was Fauci’s public message while he was privately texting the CDC Director about a theoretical miscarriage risk.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy also appeared in a What to Expect video and interview series. He told pregnant women the vaccine was appropriate “anytime” during pregnancy and should be given “ideally as soon as possible,” emphasizing the dangers of COVID-19 infection while offering no reference to the theoretical concern he had privately called “a really good point.”
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky filmed Q&A content with Murkoff that framed vaccination as the way to keep moms safe and with their babies. These appearances were packaged, promoted, and distributed through the exact channels pregnant women already trusted most, creating a big impact on the choices pregnant women made about vaccine safety.
How many of them suffered from a miscarriage after they took the “official” advice to get vaccinated?
The What to Expect Project partnered with NACCHO, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, funded in part by the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health, to survey its large audience of mothers about COVID-19 vaccination for children under 12.
The resulting data on parental hesitancy was circulated as “key data to support COVID-19 pediatric vaccinations.” Parental caution was presented as a problem to be solved rather than a legitimate concern based on data.
Once again, the brand’s intimate relationship with its audience provided a ready-made pipeline for Fauci’s priorities. Mothers thought they were answering questions from a trusted parenting resource, but their answers became ammunition for a government campaign to overcome their own vaccine hesitancy.
While additional scientific studies are needed to determine the elevated miscarriage risk from the vaccines, scientific developments do not change the facts: a brand built on parental trust was systematically used to deliver unambiguous official messaging while an earlier internal acknowledgment of theoretical risk remained out of public view.
Pregnant women were never given the chance to weigh that information for themselves. The officials who privately weighed it decided, on the public’s behalf, that mothers didn’t need to know. The result was one of the most effective targeted public-health communications campaigns of the pandemic, executed through existing channels that added credibility to the government’s claims.
Unfortunately, Anthony Fauci has refused to answer questions about this topic. During his recent congressional testimony, he pleaded the Fifth to protect himself from prosecution, even after he received a full pardon from President Joe Biden before leaving office. The committee found Fauci in contempt of Congress, and it’s possible he will face jail time for shirking accountability for his role in one of the greatest catastrophes America has faced in living memory.
Accountability starts at the top. America’s COVID-era public health officials must answer for why they never raised their private concerns to the public so people could make their own decisions about vaccine safety. All they did was make people less trusting of the government and the scientific community. Without real accountability, that trust will be shattered forever.
