Washington (CNN)Prominent right-wing figures have been falsely describing a comment the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made last week about Covid-19 deaths -- taking Dr. Rochelle Walensky out of context to wrongly claim she had delivered a dramatic new admission about the 840,000-plus Americans who have died of the virus.
On Monday, radio and television host Clay Travis, an outspoken commentator about sports, politics and the pandemic, tweeted an 11-second snippet of Walensky speaking on ABC's "Good Morning America" last Friday. Travis wrote: "The CDC director just said over 75% of 'covid deaths' occurred in people with at least four comorbidities. Since Biden can't shut down covid, suddenly all this data is getting shared publicly."
The clip Travis tweeted, which was also shared by numerous others on the right, including some lawmakers, had received more than 4 million views on Twitter as of Wednesday morning. And Fox personalities Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham played a short video snippet of Walensky on their Monday shows.
Not everyone who shared a Walensky snippet explicitly said why they found it significant. In general, though, the footage was depicted as a major CDC concession that only the sickest Americans, people with multiple pre-existing conditions, are at real risk of dying of Covid-19 -- or, relatedly, that Covid-19 had been the true cause of fewer deaths than the authorities have reported.
Facts First: Walensky did not say...
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