Biden HHS downplayed risks of COVID-19 shots, new report reveals

A congressional report published on Wednesday revealed that the Biden administration knowingly downplayed the fatal health risks of the COVID-19 vaccine to the American people.

VAERS data cause alarm

The report, released by the the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, says that as early as February 2021, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were receiving reports about myocarditis in young people following vaccination. That month, 64 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis—all cardiac events—had been reported in the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). Those cases included two deaths. The CDC uses VAERS to track vaccine safety signals, and it has been aware for at least a decade that VAERS data are underreported by a factor of approximately 20.

But those cases were only the tip of the iceberg. On February 26, 2021, officials from the CDC, FDA, and NIH held a meeting on vaccine safety, at which they noted that 19,536 adverse events had already been reported, split between 12,444 for the Pfizer shots and 7,092 for Moderna’s. Those reports included 980 deaths, many of which were from cardiac events.

Israel raises the alarm

Meanwhile, Israel’s Ministry of Health notified the CDC and FDA that it was discovering increasing cases of myocarditis among vaccinated young people. The Israeli government had conscripted its population to serve as the world’s first experimental subjects for the Pfizer mRNA shots. By February 2021, the Ministry of Health had received around 40 reports of myocarditis among people aged 16-30.

The CDC decides to downplay the risks

By May 2021, VAERS showed 487 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis. Nevertheless, the FDA authorized the shots for children aged 12-15 and did not mention any myocarditis risk in its announcement. On May 24th, a CDC committee on vaccine safety met and confirmed that the COVID-19 shots had a myocarditis safety signal. Notes from that meeting include the question, “Is VAERS signaling for myopericarditis now?” and the answer: “For the age groups 16-17 years and 18-24 years, yes.” 

The committee recommended that the CDC send out a Health Alert Network (HAN) message about the safety signal, which is how the agency communicates urgent public health notices to state and local health departments.

However, three officials downplayed the risks and pushed back on sending out a HAN: White House Deputy Director for Strategic Communications and Engagement Benjamin Wakana; Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock; and FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) Director Peter Marks. 

The CDC decided not to send out a HAN, but to instead simply include a note on its website that there were “increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis,” followed by a strong recommendation that all Americans 12 and older receive the shots.

Although CDC officials knew that VAERS data is significantly underreported, it continued to insist that instances were “rare.”

Biden’s HHS stonewalled lawmakers

The congressional report was based on documents collected via subpoena by Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). Johnson had previously tried to collect the documents from the Biden administration, but Biden officials ignored over 70 of his letters and responded to his subpoenas with heavily redacted documents. 

The Trump HHS, helmed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, readily responded with 2,473 documents. Based on those documents, the subcommittee concluded that “U.S. health officials knew about the risks of myocarditis,” “downplayed the health concern,” and “delayed informing the public about the risk.”

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