Email Reveals Why CDC Didn’t Issue Alert on COVID Vaccines and Myocarditis

This article originally appeared on The Epoch Times and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Zachary Stieber

The nation’s top public health agency didn’t send an alert about a connection between COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation because officials were concerned they would cause panic, according to an email obtained by The Epoch Times.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021 drafted an alert about the risk of heart inflammation, or myocarditis, resulting from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Officials prepared to release it to the public, taking steps including having the agency’s director review the language, internal documents show.

The alert would have been sent through the CDC’s Health Alert Network (HAN), which goes to state and local officials, as well as doctors, across the country.

The alert was never sent.

In the May 25, 2021, email, exclusively obtained by The Epoch Times, a CDC official revealed why some officials were against sending the alert.

“The pros and cons of an official HAN are what the main discussion are right now,” Dr. Sara Oliver, the official, wrote in the missive. “I think it’s likely to be a HAN since that is CDC’s primary method of communications to clinicians and public health departments, but people don’t want to appear alarmist either.”

Dr. Oliver was corresponding with an employee of either Pfizer or Moderna. The employee’s name and email were redacted in the copy obtained by The Epoch Times.

Dr. Oliver didn’t respond to a request for comment. Asked about the email, the CDC didn’t address Dr. Oliver’s statement.

The “CDC’s apparent decision to not immediately issue a formal alert to clinicians warning them about the increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis in vaccinated individuals is not only inexcusable, it’s malpractice,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“CDC should never prioritize its own public perception over the public’s health, and those who made the decision to do so must be held fully accountable.”

It remains unclear which official or officials decided not to send the alert at the time, when doctors across the country were seeing patients with myocarditis report to emergency rooms with chest pain and other symptoms.

Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who helped convince regulators to add a suicide warning to antidepressants, said the CDC’s move to downplay the risk of heart inflammation fits into a longstanding pattern of transparency issues with agencies and drug companies.

“I can’t even believe that this was even a discussion where they’re like, ‘We don’t want to alarm them.’ We do need to alarm people. We need people to be aware that this is a real potential [problem] that could happen,” Ms. Witzcak told The Epoch Times.

Those kinds of choices have helped erode consumer confidence in public health, she said.

Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director who now serves as president and CEO of the global health project Resolve to Save Lives, also reviewed the messages.

“It is important to carefully weigh the risk of COVID-19 against the risk and benefit of any treatment, including the vaccine. The vaccine safety systems worked—they found a very rare but real signal of myocarditis soon after distributing vaccines that were administered to adolescents,“ Dr. Frieden told The Epoch Times via email. ”When public health officials see a safety signal, they must investigate whether it is ‘true’ or ‘random.’ It is important to consider multiple data angles and gather evidence from partners on the ground, including clinicians. This needs to be done quickly but carefully and thoroughly.”

Moderna, Pfizer Given Heads Up

U.S. authorities identified myocarditis and a related condition, pericarditis, before the vaccines were cleared as events that could be caused by the vaccines. People who received the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines began reporting myocarditis and pericarditis to health authorities and the vaccine manufacturers shortly after the vaccines were rolled out in December 2020.

A signal in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which the CDC helps manage, was triggered in February 2021, the same month that Israel warned the CDC and U.S. drug regulators of a “large number” of cases, primarily among young males.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director at the time, first addressed the issue publicly in April 2021. She falsely said the agency had seen no reports and that no signal had triggered, while disclosing that the CDC was in touch with U.S. military officials on cases among service members.

In reality, hundreds of cases had been reported to the CDC, including some that resulted in death; the CDC either missed or ignored the signal in VAERS; and the CDC helped hide a signal that emerged from a Department of Veterans Affairs system, internal documents and other data reviewed by The Epoch Times show.

Read the full story at The Epoch Times.