Behind Closed Doors vs. Public Messaging: What Health Officials Knew—and What They Didn’t Say
Subpoenaed documents point to a growing gap between internal discussions and public messaging during the Covid vaccine rollout.
The following information is based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details have been streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.
The FDA knew the COVID shots would kill and maim countless Americans.
They kept injecting anyway.
One government employee tried to sound the alarm about “49 examples” of deadly side effects that conventional safety analyses weren’t detecting.
She was shut down.
Her name was Dr. Ana Szarfman.
On March 1, 2021, less than three months after the rollout of the COVID-19 injections, Dr. Ana Szarfman, an employee at CDER and safety data mining developer, warned that the FDA’s existing system could hide vaccine safety signals due to a flaw called “masking.”
She proposed a newer method developed by statistician Dr. William DuMouchel that corrected for this issue and, when applied, detected “49 examples of extreme masking” that the standard system did not.
These “49 examples of extreme masking” include not “minor” but serious adverse events:
• Bell’s palsy
• Cardiac failure
• Acute left ventricular failure
• Agonal rhythm (severe end-of-life arrhythmia)
• Pulmonary infarction
• Cerebral artery occlusion
• Aortic stenosis
• Sudden cardiac death
• Hypertensive emergency
• Basal ganglia stroke
When Dr. Szarfman proposed a new method, she was told to “hold off on creating and sending data mining reports and analyses.”
Later, they “made it clear” that she “needs to focus on her assigned work” and “should not be discussing or providing internal analyses externally.”
As Dr. Szarfman puts it, her work became a “pest” for raising concerns about safety signal masking.
In September 2021, Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine official, decided that Dr. Szarfman’s COVID vaccine data-mining days were over.
He informed Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, the then director of CDER, that Dr. Szarfman “has been asked to cease and desist conducting her data analysis.”
Dr. Marks complained that Dr. Szarfman’s work had become “a major distraction” and that her efforts could “create erroneous conflicts that feed into anti-vaccination rhetoric.”
Dr. Szarfman went on to retire from the FDA in 2025 after more than 35 years of service.
She raised concerns about safety signal masking. The FDA essentially told her to shut up.
Because in their eyes, “49 examples of extreme masking” could create “erroneous conflicts” and fuel “vaccine hesitancy.”
Unfortunately, this is not a one-off instance. It’s part of a much deeper problem: the gap between what’s known internally and what’s allowed to reach the public.
For years, Americans were told the COVID vaccines were “safe and effective.”
Not mostly safe.
Not partially effective.
Not still being studied.
Safe. Effective. Full stop.
The message was absolute, repeated by government officials, doctors, media outlets, hospitals, employers, schools, and nearly every major institution in the country.
But internal records now suggest something very different was being discussed behind the scenes.
The story is no longer just about whether the COVID vaccines caused harm.
That debate has been raging for years.
The bigger question is what federal health agencies knew, when they knew it, and why the public was told a much different story than the one officials were discussing behind closed doors.
Senator Ron Johnson’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations obtained thousands of pages of subpoenaed HHS records.
The investigation and subpoenaed records suggest that the CDC and FDA were aware of serious safety signals involving myocarditis and strokes, yet continued pushing the vaccines while downplaying the risks.
That’s the part we can’t ignore.
Vaccine trust was built on a very simple promise.
The government said the products had been carefully tested, monitored, and transparently evaluated.
If a serious safety issue appeared, the public would be told.
But according to the records Johnson released, that isn’t how the COVID vaccine rollout worked. Not even close.
The myocarditis timeline is absolutely brutal.
On February 28, 2021, Israel’s Ministry of Health reportedly notified CDC officials of “a large number of reports” of myocarditis, “particularly in young people,” after Pfizer vaccination.
By mid-April, CDC officials were internally discussing a myocarditis safety signal tied to mRNA vaccines.
But the public—the people receiving these vaccines—didn’t receive that same level of warning.
As early as May 2021, CDC and FDA officials had reportedly acknowledged a myocarditis/pericarditis signal, especially in males ages 16–17 and 18–24.
VAERS was signaling the same problem in those age groups.
That should have been a defining moment for public transparency.
Instead, officials softened the message and kept pushing the vaccine.
A formal Health Alert Network message was drafted.
A HAN alert is not some casual website update. It’s how health agencies warn doctors and public health officials when something serious needs attention. That’s big.
But according to Johnson’s findings, the alert was never issued.
The public got milder “clinical considerations” instead.
That’s shocking.
The full article from A Midwestern Doctor walks through the internal timeline in detail, including what CDC and FDA officials reportedly knew before the public was fully warned about myocarditis.
Everyone needs to see this.
Why Did the Government Lie About the COVID Vaccines?
Then came the stroke signal.
After the Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent booster was authorized on August 31, 2022, the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink reportedly began detecting a statistically significant ischemic stroke signal in people 65 and older by November 27, 2022.
That signal reportedly persisted through multiple weekly analyses, and it appeared in seniors, the very group most aggressively targeted for boosters.
According to the records, officials did not issue a formal Health Alert Network warning or recommend changes to vaccination guidance for that high-risk age group.
Despite the signal, public guidance did not change—and they kept pushing the boosters.
Internal records show officials launched investigations, including a contractor-led “Stroke Project,” while public messaging remained reassuring.
Draft communications in early January 2023 softened the language from “moderately elevated” to “slightly elevated.”
That one edit says so much.
On January 13, 2023, the agencies posted a brief notice acknowledging the stroke signal but said “no change is recommended in COVID-19 vaccination practice.”
By early February, VAERS reports of ischemic stroke had reportedly climbed to 226 cases.
And still, the guidance did not change.
The human stakes here are enormous.
Stroke-related injury in the elderly is especially easy to miss because seniors are often less able to advocate for themselves.
A nursing home resident declines after a shot, shows signs of neurological injury, deteriorates into dementia, and the system writes it off as aging.
That means not only is it easy to miss, it’s also very easy to hide.
It doesn’t mean every decline in the elderly was vaccine-related.
But it does show why honest safety monitoring matters.
When the same population being targeted for boosters is also the population least able to report injuries, doctors and families need more transparency, not less.
Instead, the public was repeatedly told the matter was settled.
If something changed rapidly after vaccination, family members being to ask questions—but those questions were often brushed off or attributed to normal aging.
The full breakdown from A Midwestern Doctor also gets into the elderly stroke signal, the “Stroke Project,” and why these injuries may have been so easy to dismiss as ordinary decline.
Why Did the Government Lie About the COVID Vaccines?
By now, this pattern should feel familiar.
A vaccine is rushed into a public health crisis.
The benefits are oversold.
The harms are minimized.
And when problems appear, officials protect the program instead of correcting course.
Then, when the public resists, the blame shifts to the people who refuse to comply.
Institutions don’t like to admit they were wrong.
That pattern didn’t begin with COVID.
Tragically, it has appeared again and again throughout vaccine history, starting with smallpox.
The difference this time is the scale.
The COVID vaccine campaign reached nearly every workplace, school, hospital, military unit, and family in America and across the world. The scale was truly unprecedented.
So when trust broke, it broke everywhere.
Polling over the last several years reflects that collapse in trust.
Rasmussen found that by July 2021, 32% believed public health officials were lying about vaccine safety.
By January 2023, 49% believed vaccine side effects had likely caused a significant number of unexplained deaths.
By September 2024, that number had risen to 55%.
One 2023 survey of 2,840 respondents found 15% of vaccinated individuals reported a vaccine injury—and 22% said they knew someone who experienced a severe injury.
That’s not rare.
That’s widespread exposure.
Other findings were just as stark.
In December 2022, 34% of vaccinated respondents reported minor side effects and 7% reported major side effects.
By November 2025, 26% reported minor side effects, 10% reported major side effects—and 46% still believed vaccines had caused a significant number of unexplained deaths, after that number had peaked above 50% in earlier polling.
That is not a fringe collapse.
Confidence in the pharmaceutical industry has also dropped sharply.
Gallup data shows positive views falling to around 28%, while negative views climbed near 58%.
That’s one of the lowest trust levels of any major industry.
The damage to trust has spread far beyond COVID shots.
A JAMA survey of 443,455 American adults found trust in physicians and hospitals fell from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024.
That’s huge.
And it’s what happens when institutions demand trust while refusing transparency.
The collapse also hit vaccine mandates.
Gallup data showed support for government childhood vaccine requirements falling from roughly 80% in the early 1990s to 51% in 2024, while opposition rose to 45%.
COVID did not create every concern people had.
It made millions feel like their concerns were justified and that they could finally talk about it.
The full report includes polling from Rasmussen, Gallup, Pew, KFF, JAMA, and others showing how far trust has fallen since COVID.
Why Did the Government Lie About the COVID Vaccines?
This isn’t just about COVID.
The same cycle has played out repeatedly throughout vaccine history—enthusiasm, emerging problems, denial, and eventual public backlash.
The difference now is that the pattern is visible.
And once people see it, they don’t unsee it.
The most important point is not that everyone has to reach the same conclusion about every vaccine.
The point is that public health cannot survive on censorship, coercion, and selective disclosure.
When agencies hide risks to protect a program, they do not protect trust.
They burn it down.
That is why “just trust the experts” no longer works.
Trust is not rebuilt by repeating slogans louder and more often.
It’s rebuilt by releasing the data, admitting what went wrong, compensating the injured, removing conflicts of interest, and making sure the same patterns never happen again.
The government didn’t lose our trust because people suddenly became irrational.
It lost trust because people saw the gap between what they were told, what they saw with their own eyes, and the proof that came out later.
Once that gap becomes visible, the old model collapses.
The only path forward is radical transparency—and a system that will not and cannot repeat the same pattern again.
Thanks for reading! This information was based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details were streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.
Why Did the Government Lie About the COVID Vaccines?
For a deeper dive into what modern medicine has overlooked—or intentionally buried—check out these other eye-opening reports by A Midwestern Doctor:
The Great Alzheimer’s Scam and The Proven Cures They’ve Buried for Billions
The Hidden Dangers of Hospital Births & How to Protect Your Family
The FDA’s 50-Year War on the Safest Painkiller Ever Discovered
While you’re at it, give A Midwestern Doctor a follow. No one brings more research, clinical insight, or historical context when it comes to exposing the health myths we’ve all been fed. This is easily one of the most valuable accounts you’ll ever follow.
If you haven’t subscribed to this Substack yet, take a moment to read what some of the most powerful voices in the medical freedom/truth movement have to say:
“The Vigilant Fox has been putting in a lot of work to create a news platform that shares the stories we want to hear about and brings attention to the most important things to know about. If you want a daily newsfeed in alignment with our ...”
– A Midwestern Doctor, The Forgotten Side of Medicine
“The Vigilant Fox absolutely is on top of things. We must support our fighters, and the Fox is fighting with truth.”
– Tom Renz, Tom Renz’s Newsletter
“Excellent capture of key video presentations on evolving pandemic science.”
– Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse)
I gave 3 years of content to someone I know in BARDA, who was commended for WARP SPEED by the President. That person knew. EVERYONE'S emails ought to be subpoenaed. The biggest hurdle I have getting over what happened, is that MOST people don't seem to care.
And therefore, the reason you cannot trust anything the government says or does. The education system's number one job is to inculcate the belief that government is for our good. This is why so many highly educated individuals took many shots. I've tried talking them out of the scam, yet everyone I tried to help still took the shots. They had fear and trust in the system. I am educated, too, but I've also created a self-made BS meter that kept me away from this terrible scam.