The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified more than 700 safety signals indicating COVID-19 vaccines were causing adverse events—including heart failure and death—in May 2022, yet continued to push vaccinations.
According to documents obtained by The Epoch Times via a Freedom of Information Act request, top U.S. health agencies identified hundreds of safety signals for Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines months earlier than the public was told.
It is the obligation of the CDC to detect safety signals and monitor vaccine injury reports, typically done by calculating a proportional reporting ratio (PRR) on vaccine injuries. The CDC initially claimed it never ran a PRR on injury reports made to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is a voluntary reporting system co-managed by the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration designed to detect vaccine safety signals.
The CDC later claimed it started the PRR in February 2021—just two months after the vaccine rollout. The agency then said it didn’t start until March 2022—more than a year after it said it began data mining for vaccine safety signals. This claim was also false.
According to FOIA documents, the agency didn’t begin its analysis for vaccine signals until May 2022.
The files show that when CDC conducted its first PRR, it identified more than 200 safety signals for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and 93 signals for Moderna’s. Analyses compare the events reported after receiving one vaccine with events reported after receiving another or several others, The Epoch Times reported. The CDC detected many of the same signals later in July 2022. Again, the agency did nothing.
“Federal health agencies have ignored the flashing alarms of their own safety surveillance systems since early 2021. They have ignored my oversight letters and lied about what analyses they have performed,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told The Epoch Times in an email. “It is well past time for the American public to be told the truth.”
In the CDC’s 2021 and 2022 standard operating procedures for VAERS, the agency states officials would monitor the system to identify “potential new safety concerns for COVID-19 vaccines.” The FDA would perform an Empirical Bayesian (EB) data mining analysis, while CDC would perform PRR data mining.
The PRR analysis triggers a signal when the following occurs: a reporting ratio of at least two, a chi-squared statistic of at least four, and “three or more cases of the event following receipt of the vaccine or vaccines being analyzed.”
Health agencies say the EB mining is more robust, and the CDC’s PRR analysis is designed to “corroborate the results of EB data mining.”
The CDC previously told The Epoch Times that PRR results were generally consistent with the EB mining data, revealing no additional safety signals, but the FDA s refusing to release the results of the EB analysis.
The CDC claims it has investigated some of the signals, but the agency refuses to provide evidence it has investigated each signal. The agency has also refused to explain what it meant when it said it expected signals such as female breast cancer, Crohn’s disease, and Bell’s palsy.