FDA To Start Investigating Child Deaths Following Covid Shots
The investigation will use data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), as well as autopsy reports and interviews with families who lost a child, said Dr. Marty Makary, head of the FDA
VAERS data as of Aug. 29 show 202 deaths of children ages 17 and younger following COVID-19 vaccination, but some suspect that number is much higher.
“We’re going to release a report in the coming few weeks,” Dr. Marty Makary, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We’re talking to the primary sources, the family members who lost a child … we’re reviewing the autopsy reports, we’re having physicians do the investigation,” he said.
The investigation is drawing on reports from the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, according to Makary.
“We’ve been looking into the VAERS database, self-reports that there have been children who have died from the COVID vaccine. And so, we’re doing a proper investigation,” he said.
Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, said she was “delighted” to hear about the investigation, which she said “is many years overdue.”
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said the investigation is “very late” and should also examine adult post-vaccination deaths, adding that administration of the COVID-19 vaccines should be halted pending the outcome of such an investigation.
He said:
“Starting with the pediatric deaths is an anemic start, as we expect that he will review all … cases and the dozens of peer-reviewed manuscripts that have analyzed these cases.
Any such investigation should be done after any further vaccination is halted, so more deaths do not occur under the new FDA administration.”
Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher agreed. He called the investigation “a breath of fresh air” but said it “should have been initiated a long time ago — in 2021.”
VAERS data as of Aug. 29 show 202 reports of deaths among children ages 17 and younger following COVID-19 vaccination.
However, that number isn’t necessarily accurate, for several reasons.
VAERS, co-managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA, is a “passive reporting system.” That means the system relies on medical professionals or people who believe they, or their child, were injured to submit a report — and that doesn’t always happen.
In fact, a 2011 Harvard report found that less than 1% of all adverse events are reported to VAERS.
And even when an injury or death is reported, investigations have suggested that the report may not be publicly visible in the system.
A 2022 audit by React19, an organization advocating on behalf of COVID-19 vaccine injury victims and their families, found that 1 in 3 COVID-19 vaccine adverse event reports in VAERS were not posted publicly or were deleted.
And in 2023, an investigation by The British Medical Journal revealed that the FDA and CDC maintain two separate VAERS databases — one available to the public that contains only initial reports, and a private back-end system containing updates to the original reports.
That’s significant because reports of injuries or deaths to VAERS require verification before they can be confirmed as vaccine-related injuries or deaths — but that information can only be found in the updated reports.
Adding to the difficulty in estimating deaths and injuries among children is that if the person who reports the injury neglects to fill in the age field, it’s impossible to do an accurate search of injuries or deaths by age.
According to analyst Albert Benavides, founder of VAERSAware.com, the summaries that accompany the reports often contain the victim’s age, but this information won’t appear when searching for reports by age in VAERS if the age field in the report is empty.
“This is clearly where most dead children are hiding in VAERS,” said analyst Albert Benavides, founder of VAERSAware.com. Benavides said the summaries of reports with an “unknown” age listed show “three times the amount of dead children ‘hiding’ in VAERS” compared to the official figure.
As of Aug. 29, VAERS contains 13,457 reports of deaths following COVID-19 vaccination that list an “unknown” age, and 73,176 COVID-19 vaccine injury reports involving people under 18.
According to Makary, the CDC stonewalled the FDA’s investigation, contributing to uncertainty surrounding the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.
He said:
“Since we came into office, early on in the first few months, we got blocked and we were given different excuses and told to wait and ‘we can’t do it.’ It was those individuals who resigned from the CDC, that were in leadership, that gave us the hard time about getting the data.”
Holland said it was “horrifying to think that CDC officials in the past impeded investigation into child deaths from federally recommended medical interventions.”
During a U.S. Senate hearing last week, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that while COVID-19 vaccines have “saved lives” according to some and also caused deaths, the numbers for both categories are unclear due to “data chaos coming out of the CDC.”
On Aug. 27, the White House confirmed the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, after she refused to resign amid clashes with Kennedy.
In recent months, several CDC officials and scientists involved with the agency’s vaccine policy have resigned, including former CDC vaccine chief Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, and senior CDC scientist Dr. Fiona Havers.
In an interview Sunday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Kennedy said Daskalakis withheld critical vaccine safety data.
“For seven months, he stonewalled us so we could not get that data,” Kennedy said.
Last week, President Donald Trump suggested that the CDC and Big Pharma have not been fully forthcoming about COVID-19 vaccine safety data. Trump demanded they “clear up this mess.”
According to The Epoch Times, the U.S. has not released an official number of deaths confirmed to be related to COVID-19 vaccination.
News of the FDA’s investigation comes days after Kennedy announced that the FDA ended emergency use authorization of the COVID-19 vaccines, restricting the shots to people at higher risk for severe illness.
However, the vaccines will continue to be available to everyone, in consultation with their physicians, pending new recommendations for the forthcoming cold and flu season by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
The committee is scheduled to meet Sept. 18 to vote on the new recommendations.
Makary questioned the necessity of COVID-19 vaccination for healthy people.
“People are appropriately asking today, ‘if I’m healthy, do I need to take another booster shot?’” Makary said, noting that most healthcare workers did not receive a COVID-19 booster during the previous cold and flu season.
“Eighty-five percent of healthcare workers did not get the COVID booster for themselves last fall, so that tells you what the real consensus is,” Makary said.
Makary also questioned a new “evidence-based immunization schedule” published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) last month. The schedule defies CDC guidance by recommending COVID-19 vaccination for all children between 6 and 23 months of age “to help protect against serious illness.”
The AAP recommends a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for all children and adolescents aged two to 18 years old who are in a high-risk group, and for children in the same age group whose parent or guardian requests the shot.
Makary said the AAP is free to issue its own recommendations and welcomed a “civil discourse” with the organization — but added that the AAP is “the same group that insisted schools stay shut down.”
The AAP represents 67,000 pediatricians and receives substantial funding from the federal government and from Big Pharma — including vaccine manufacturers.
See more here childrenshealthdefense.org
Header image: Sky News
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Another day late and a dollar short effort.
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