vaccinated and writing president biden should be applauded for his administration s vaccine efforts. that shift in tone coincides with the delta vary yants tearing across the u.s. hitting conservative lee eaning states especially hard where vaccination rates are the lowest in the country. it s safe and effective. i wanted to show the picture to encourage medium. reporter: some republican lawmakers are being more outspoken to encourage people to get the shots. steve scalise announced he got first dose on sunday after seeing the covid scases rise. i was ready to get the vaccine. i always felt it was safe and effective. reporter: in his stats of louisiana la, only 30% of people are fully vaccinated an the daily case rate is three times the national average. mitch mcconnell who survived polio and advocated for people to get vaccinated did not mince words this week.
hopefully there are still those that are on the fence that can be moved. i m going to stick with you, dr. blackstock, here, because we ve got there s a story in pro publica today about gop legislators in missouri opposing vaccine efforts as the state as missouri becomes a hot spot for covid. so not only are people facing misinformation that they might be getting from social media and from media media, but from elected officials who should know better. right. they should absolutely know better. what we ve seen since the pandemic has started is that public health messaging has been consistently undermined by elected officials. that s what s caused the most significant harm. people are listening to them. i just want to make sure people understand that most people who remain unvaccinated, they re people who had these fixed beliefs even before the pandemic. they were more likely not to get the flu vaccine. but this other constant
reporter: the ceo of the far right network newsmax chris ruddy published an op-ed saying he s been vaccinated and writing, president biden should be, quote, applauded for his administration s vaccine efforts. that shift in tone coincides with the delta variant tearing across the u.s., hitting conservative, had leaning states especially hard where vaccination rates are some of the lowest in the country. it s safe and effective. i took it and i wanted to show the picture to just encourage people. reporter: now some republican lawmakers are being more outspoken in their effort to encourage people to get the shots. house minority whip steve scalise announced he got the first dose of the vaccine on sunday after seeing the covid cases rise due to the delta variant. i was ready to get the vaccine. i ve always felt it was safe and effective. reporter: in his state of louisiana, only 36% of people are fully vaccinated, and the daily case rate is three times the national average. senat
the pandemic remains front and center on a busy presidential schedule this week. the white house putting a priority on fighting vaccine misinformation as the president calls out social media companies for, quote, killing people. yeah, he is also facing covid connected challenges with the economy and pressure from allies in europe to open up travel. cnn s jasmine wright joins us live from the white house. it s going to be a busy woeek fr the white house. a lot of things going on, on multiple fronts. walk us through the agenda. reporter: president biden wakes up this sunday morning at camp david. when he returns here to d.c. he has a big week ahead of him. on monday he will give remarks about the economy and his administration s progress on vaccine efforts really as they stare down emerging twin crises with soaring house prices and inflation concerns as well as rising covid cases across the country. now, on inflation, a white house official told me earlier this
governor was reluctant to impose. tennessee s health department confirms it has stopped all adolescent vaccine outreach telling cnn the issue has become polarized. a spokeswoman for the department says the pause is to evaluate their messaging and make sure that it is not hurting vaccine efforts. dr. fiscis was tennessee s top vaccination official but she says she was fired in a dispute over parental permission for vaccinating children. and she also told cnn that even before she was fired, people found her opinion unpopular. the week before i was mat terminated, i received a package that contained a dog muzzle and at first i thought that was a joke and contacted a few friends and then when no one claimed it, realized that that was something that was sent to me as some kind of a message i suppose. they obviously didn t know me because they sent me a size 3