Sen. Johnson Sends Letter Pressing Health Agencies On Efforts to Monitor Reports of Adverse Reactions to COVID-19 Vaccines
District of Columbia, Wisconsin | July 20, 2021
“Full disclosure, honesty and transparency will be the only way to regain your credibility and restore the public’s confidence in your agencies
On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) sent a letter to Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Dr. Janet Woodcock, Acting Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requesting information regarding the agencies’ efforts to monitor and effectively utilize reports of adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has recorded, in roughly seven months 438,441 adverse events, which is 15 times greater than the weekly average prior to Covid. VAERS may not prove causality, but these numbers suggest it is an early warning system that should be taken seriously. The American people deserve transparency and as much information as possible from the federal government so they may make an informed choice about their own health.
“In October 2020, prior to any vaccine receiving an EUA, your agencies were expressing and conveying a great deal of confidence in your early warning vaccine safety systems like VAERS,” the senator wrote. “Both CDC and FDA included VAERS as one of the primary passive surveillance tools for monitoring COVID-19 vaccine safety. CDC highlighted that VAERS covered the entire U.S. population and its ability to ‘rapidly detect safety signals’ and‘detect rare adverse events.’ Now, nine months and 438,441 reported adverse events later, health care professionals are publicly downplaying the effectiveness and validity of these same systems. For example, on May 3, 2021, Dr. Paul Offit, who is a member of an FDA advisory committee, stated ‘So [VAERS is] a noisy system that frankly is more frightening than helpful.’ Which is it?”
On June 28, Senator Johnson held a press conference in Milwaukee with families from across the country who shared their experiences regarding adverse reactions to Covid-19 vaccines and how the medical community and federal health agencies have repeatedly ignored their concerns. Full video may be viewed here. Video and graphs presented by Sen. Johnson available here. Since the press conference Twitter has labeled videos of personal testimony as misleading, and Facebook has censored private groups and individual posts.
The full text of the letter can be found here