Video takes Biden out of context on the role vaccines play in hurricane preparedness

Pundits have described Joe Biden as a "gaffe machine," prone to verbal errors and slips of the tongue, throughout his long political career. 

But that isn’t what happened in a video that makes it look like Biden mistakenly urged people to get vaccinated to protect themselves from hurricanes. 

The video was shared across Instagram and Facebook, and it was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Edited footage first posted on TikTok shows Biden speaking before a meeting on hurricane preparedness. 

"Let me be clear: If you're in a state where hurricanes often strike — like Florida or the Gulf Coast or into Texas — a vital part of preparing for hurricane season is to get vaccinated now," Biden says in the video. 

"Get vaccinated to protect yourselves from hurricanes y’all," reads text at the bottom of the video. Some versions of the video piled on by adding dumbfounded reactions from comedians Steve Harvey and Kevin Hart.

Out of context, Biden’s remarks don’t make much sense. But these videos omitted Biden’s explanation.

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stated on April 2, 2024 in an Instagram post

“The National Guard in the HISTORY of its life, gets called in AFTER a disaster, not BEFORE something happens.”

Here’s a full transcript of Biden’s comments, including the portion removed from the TikTok video: 

Biden: "Let me be clear: If you’re in a state where hurricanes often strike — like Florida or the Gulf Coast or into Texas — a vital part of preparing for hurricane season is to get vaccinated now.  Everything is more complicated if you’re not vaccinated and a hurricane or a natural disaster hits. If you wind up having to evacuate, if you wind up having to stay in a shelter, you don’t want to add COVID-19 to the list of dangers that you’re going to be confronting." 

In context, Biden was urging people in states threatened by hurricanes to get vaccinated in order to lower the risk that they’ll become infected by the coronavirus while staying in a shelter or evacuating from their homes. 

Biden’s remarks mirror hurricane preparedness tips published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

"Planning for hurricane season and other potential disasters can be stressful, and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it may be especially so," the document reads. It goes on to list several pieces of advice for people in states prone to experience hurricanes and other natural disasters, including getting vaccinated against COVID-19. 

A video shared across social media platforms purports to show Biden saying that getting vaccinated will protect people from hurricanes. 

The video takes Biden of context and misleadingly captions his remarks. The full transcript and clip of his comments shows that he was encouraging people to get vaccinated to decrease the chance that they’ll become infected by coronavirus in the event that they have to stay at a shelter or evacuate from their homes. 

We rate this claim False. ​