‘Expect Fireworks’: CDC Launches Group to Study COVID Vaccine Injuries, Efficacy
It's about time!
This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.
A new CDC workgroup will review data related to side effects and deaths associated with the shots. The news comes just five weeks after Sen. Ron Johnson hosted a U.S. Senate hearing on vaccine injuries, and three months after Johnson hosted a hearing on COVID-19 vaccines.
A new CDC workgroup will review scientific data and studies on the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, including data related to side effects and deaths associated with the shots.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the workgroup will use the results of its review “to help develop [the agency’s] COVID-19 immunization policy options.”
The “COVID-19 Immunization Workgroup,” announced Wednesday, will be housed under the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and led by one of ACIP’s members, Retsef Levi, Ph.D., professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
ACIP decides which vaccines should be recommended to the public, who should take them and how often. The committee’s recommendations also help determine which vaccines will be covered by insurers and the CDC Vaccines for Children Program.
According to the CDC, ACIP workgroups “review relevant published and unpublished data, and clinical and scientific knowledge,” and deliver those findings to the full committee.
The CDC said the workgroup members will analyze:
Risk-benefit and cost-benefit analyses of current and new mRNA and non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and immunization schedules as they relate to the COVID-19 vaccines.
“Critical gaps” in the existing scientific and clinical literature on COVID-19 vaccines.
Data — and clinical and scientific knowledge — relating to adverse events associated with the COVID-19 vaccines.
Areas where “additional data and research are needed to inform COVID-19 immunization recommendations.”
The workgroup will address “gaps in the existing knowledge about potential impurities,” including DNA contamination, in the COVID-19 vaccines, and gaps in scientific knowledge about the persistence and distribution of spike protein, mRNA and lipid nanoparticles in the body.
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Members of the group will review existing data and literature on the cumulative impact of receiving repeated booster doses, on “cardiovascular, thrombotic, neurological, immunological and other serious adverse events potentially caused by COVID-19 immunization”; on the COVID-19 vaccines’ impact on pregnant women; and on “all cause deaths, hospitalizations, and disability” related to the vaccines.
According to The Associated Press, the newly constituted ACIP has not yet voted on COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for the upcoming cold and flu season.
In July, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), with help from Children’s Health Defense (CHD), hosted a U.S. Senate hearing on vaccine injuries that included a discussion of COVID-19 vaccines. In May, Johnson held a hearing dedicated specifically to COVID-19 vaccines.
Establishment of workgroup ‘long overdue’
CHD CEO Mary Holland said the announcement of the new workgroup is a “promising” development. She added:
“The need to reevaluate these novel gene therapies, rebranded as vaccines, is urgent. Reports and data from around the world point to their extremely toxic profile. The legitimacy of the workgroup’s work will depend on its composition — we hope that Dr. Levi brings in truly independent, unbiased members to work with him.
“Together with many civil society organizations, Children’s Health Defense has stated that these mRNA injections should long ago have been removed from the market, given the extraordinary level of reported injuries and deaths they have caused.”
Sayer Ji, chairman and co-founder of the Global Wellness Forum and co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom, said the establishment of the new workgroup “reveals how much was rushed, and how little was independently examined, during the original rollout” of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Drug safety advocate Kim Witczak, a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, called the news “long overdue but absolutely necessary.”
“This is a positive step, but it also highlights a systemic problem: these questions should have been fully addressed before recommendations and mandates were made,” Witczak said.
Witczak said that, in 2023, she and others submitted a citizen petition to the FDA outlining safety concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines. She said the FDA “ignored” the petition.
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said, “If and when a safety review is undertaken and if and when the COVID-19 vaccines are pulled from the market, the public will ask ‘why did this take so long and why were so many allowed to be harmed by mRNA biotechnology?’”
Ji said the selection of Levi to lead the workgroup “signals a rare opening for independent voices — he has consistently raised critical questions about safety signals and data transparency.”
In a blog post, Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., agreed. Describing the formation of the workgroup as “a striking reversal for the CDC and the FDA,” she praised Levi for being “an outspoken voice” on the ACIP committee on topics including “the narrow surveillance windows” used to track vaccine injuries and the safety of other treatments, including monoclonal antibodies for RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus.
“Under the guidance of Levi and his colleagues, the ACIP working group now has a mandate unlike anything the committee has ever undertaken,” Demasi wrote. “For the first time, federal advisers will investigate the unresolved issues that have dogged the vaccines since their rushed rollout in late 2020.”
Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, said she believes the workgroup will deliver significant findings on the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines and on “uncovering the CDC’s criminality.”
“Expect fireworks,” Nass wrote on her Substack.
‘We need to be fully transparent about what we know, and what we don’t’
In an interview earlier this week with journalist Demasi, Levi said there is much that remains unknown about the risks and harms of the COVID-19 vaccines, including their long-term adverse effects and how long the spike protein remains in the body.
“We need to be fully transparent about what we know, and what we don’t, and unfortunately that was not always practised consistently in the past. My intention is to be part of changing that,” Levi said.
Levi said he cannot yet publicly reveal the names of all of the workgroup’s members. However, he confirmed that the group will include two other ACIP members — Dr. Robert Malone, a physician-scientist and biochemist known for his early contributions to mRNA vaccine technology, and Dr. James Pagano, a board-certified emergency medicine physician with over 40 years of clinical experience following his residency at UCLA.
According to the CDC, the workgroup will include experts in public health, clinical and medical practice, epidemiology, molecular biology, immunology, virology, drug and vaccine safety, and “consumer perspectives and/or social and community aspects of immunization programs.”
Levi said, “We plan to engage a range of experts in different areas, leading scientists in academia and clinicians with field experience. I’m confident that together with colleagues at the CDC and FDA, we’ll build a robust team.”
‘Many of our questions are not fully answered and require further investigation’
In June, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. retired all 17 members of ACIP to eliminate conflicts of interest. Most members had financial ties to vaccine manufacturers or had worked with public health agencies to promote controversial vaccines, including the COVID-19, RSV and HPV shots.
Two days later, Kennedy named eight researchers and physicians, including Levi, to the committee. One nominee declined to participate.
That month, a CDC scientist who helped shape national vaccine policy for COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses resigned, citing concerns about the future of vaccine policy under Kennedy’s leadership. A member of a CDC working group on the COVID-19 vaccine also resigned.
In his interview with Demasi, Levi said the workgroup’s examination of the COVID-19 vaccines will be “forward-facing” and ACIP’s members were “appointed with a goal of asking more questions and bringing all the available information and knowledge needed to understand the efficacy and the safety of these Covid-19 vaccines.”
“Many of our questions are not fully answered and require further investigation,” Levi said.
Levi said that “vaccinating pregnant women” with the COVID-19 vaccine “is particularly concerning,” adding that COVID-19 vaccines were recommended to this population “with no clinical trials.”
“The original pivotal trials excluded pregnant women, and the only trial ever conducted was very small, underpowered, focused on vaccination in later stages of pregnancy and stopped early. Having researched this topic myself, I can say the literature is mostly retrospective observational studies — methodologically weak for assessing safety,” Levi said.
Levi also criticized the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which earlier this week published COVID-19 vaccine recommendations — which contradict the latest CDC recommendations — for infants and children. Levi called the AAP’s actions “childish.”
The AAP, which represents 67,000 pediatricians, receives substantial funding from Big Pharma — including vaccine makers — and the federal government.
Last month, the AAP and five other medical organizations sued Kennedy and other public health officials and agencies over changes to the COVID-19 vaccination recommendations for children and pregnant women, which led to new CDC COVID-19 vaccine guidance for these populations.
“They receive funding from Pfizer, Moderna and other vaccine manufacturers. If anyone on ACIP had those financial entanglements, they would be excluded from discussion and policy recommendations,” Levi said.
Levi also questioned the safety of the mRNA technology.
“Unlike traditional vaccines, when a COVID vaccine is administered, we don’t know the actual dose. The vaccine introduces into the body’s cells the mRNA code that is wrapped in nano lipids, and as a result, the cells are instructed to produce the spike protein. However, everyone could produce a different amount of spike protein,” Levi said.
“There is evidence that some people may still be producing spike protein more than 700 days after the last vaccination. That’s a very concerning finding,” Levi added.
Levi also cited concern over “high levels” of DNA contamination in the COVID-19 vaccines — namely, excessive levels of plasmid DNA, which he said are “not supposed to be there.”
Levi also criticized existing vaccine safety surveillance systems, which he said do not track the long-term adverse effects of vaccines.
“These systems are not designed to identify adverse events that don’t fit one diagnosis, involve non-specific symptoms, or take longer to emerge,” Levi said. “There is a misconception that harms of vaccines primarily show up shortly after vaccination, and long-term harms are assumed to be unlikely and essentially ignored.”
Levi said that he also wants to ensure the voices of those injured by the COVID-19 vaccines and other vaccines are heard. “I want to make sure we don’t leave them behind. We have a moral obligation to do whatever we can to document the injuries and care for injured people — not just COVID vaccine injuries, but vaccine injuries more broadly.”
According to the CDC’s terms of reference, the workgroup will operate until its mission “has been fulfilled.”
Related articles in The Defender
RFK Jr. Taps 8 New ACIP Members, Offit Concedes Most ‘Seem Reasonable’
Breaking: RFK Jr. Removes All Members of CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee
Leading Pediatrician Group Defies CDC, Tells Parents to Get COVID Shots for Infants, Kids
RFK Jr. Hit With Lawsuit Over Changes to COVID Vaccine Policies for Kids, Pregnant Women
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