Did the CDC quietly release data showing that 7 out of 10 Americans are declining the COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 50.1% of the total population, or 166,388,129 people, had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and 40.2% of the total population, or 133,532,544 people, were fully vaccinated as of this writing.
The claim appeared as an Instagram post (archived here) on May 27, 2021. It opened:
Turns out CDC quietly released data showing that 7 out of 10 Americans are declining the experimental gene therapy.
Social media users saw this post
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri May 28 12:57:15 2021 UTC)
There is no evidence the CDC released data showing that 7 out of 10 Americans are declining the "experimental gene therapy," which Lead Stories assumes is meant to be the COVID-19 vaccine. The CDC website breaks down the number of people who had received one dose and who are fully vaccinated as of May 28, 2021, here:
Our World in Data also tracks the number of people in the United States who have received the COVID-19 vaccine. The share of people fully vaccinated against COVID-19, 40% of the U.S. population, is represented in this graph:
This graph shows the number of people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as 132.77 million and the number of people who are only partially vaccinated as 32.95 million:
Lead Stories debunked the claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Peter Marks, Food and Drug Administration officer, said "about 40 to 50% of CDC, FDA employees are refusing the COVID-19 vaccine" here.
