EXCLUSIVE: Newly Obtained Emails Shed More Light on CDC’s False Vaccine Safety Monitoring Statements
Newly obtained emails show the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a false statement on COVID-19 ...
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Newly obtained emails show the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a false statement on COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring in 2021, months before agency officials gave false statements on the matter to The Epoch Times.
The emails also show top officials in the agency discussing performing safety monitoring on a key database for myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that has been linked to the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
The CDC promised in 2021 in a set of operating procedures to perform a type of analysis called Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) on reports of adverse reactions following COVID-19 vaccination. The reports are submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (
VAERS), which officials have described as “the nation’s early warning system” for post-vaccination adverse events. The CDC also said in an updated set of operating procedures in 2022 that it would perform the analysis.
But the CDC has
made false statements three times this year on PRRs, initially saying such analysis was outside the agency’s purview, then saying the analysis was performed starting in 2021, then saying the analysis did not begin until 2022. The newly obtained emails show that an official falsely said the CDC does not perform PRR analysis to an editor in 2021.
John Gregory, a health editor at NewsGuard, wrote to the CDC on Oct. 19, 2021, asking for a comment regarding a claim that the CDC’s PRR analysis cannot accurately identify when a vaccine causes adverse events, one of the emails shows. Martha Sharan, a CDC spokeswoman, sent the query to Dr. John Su, who leads the CDC’s VAERS team, and Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, who also works on vaccine safety.
Their responses were redacted apart from a comment on NewsGuard. Sharan then wrote that she’d spoken to Gregory.
“I spoke to the reporter and explained that CDC does not do PPR analysis. The reporter is not going to pursue this any further!”
she wrote, adding later that she meant PRR.
That contradicts the
operating procedures, which state that the CDC “will perform Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) analysis” on VAERS reports.
“We let our published content speak for itself,” Gregory told The Epoch Times in an email when notified that the CDC does actually perform PRRs.
‘That’s a New One to Me’
In June 2022, the CDC falsely told Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit, that PRR analysis is “outside of th[e] agency’s purview.” An Associated Press reporter, Angelo Fichera, flagged a Children’s Health Defense article on the statement to the CDC, asking whether the CDC had ever performed the analysis, according to the newly obtained emails.
Kristen Nordlund, another CDC spokeswoman, forwarded the query to Sharan. “Martha—thoughts on this one?” she asked.
“That’s a new one on me—proportional reporting ratios’—I need to send this one to John,” Sharan
responded.
Sharan later sent a statement about PRRs to The Associated Press and the Washington Examiner.
The Associated Press and NewsGuard never published stories on the topic. After The Epoch Times reported on contradictory statements from the CDC, the Examiner published
an article about the developments.
Fichera, Sharan, and Su did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
The emails were obtained by The Epoch Times and an independent researcher through FOIA requests.
“The CDC claims to be vigilantly and transparently monitoring the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, but when it comes to Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) analysis, the CDC’s broken promises, inconsistent statements, stonewalling, and double standards tell a different story,” Mary Holland, president and general counsel of Children’s Health Defense, told The Epoch Times via email.
“When asked about PRR analysis in connection with COVID vaccines—through FOIA, media, and congressional requests—CDC has made conflicting statements, some of them false. When confronted about the statements, the CDC claimed, essentially, that PRR analysis is not worth doing. And for the few months of PRR the CDC now says it
has completed, the CDC has failed to make the results public, despite requests from multiple sources.”
“Children’s Health Defense calls on the CDC to do the right thing: do the analysis, and make the results available,” she added.
Timeline of CDC emails and statements. Some are being reported for the first time in this story, which continues below.
- “I spoke to the reporter and explained that CDC does not do PPR analysis. The reporter is not going to pursue this any further!” – Martha Sharan to CDC colleagues, Oct. 19, 2021. (source: FOIA response to independent researcher)
- “Correction – that should say PRR.” – Martha Sharan to CDC colleagues, Oct. 19, 2021. (FOIA response to independent researcher)
- “[P]rogram staff within the Immunization and Safety Office inform me that no PRRs were conducted by CDC. Furthermore, data mining is outside of th[e] agency’s purview.” – Roger Andoh, June 16, 2022. (letter to Children’s Health Defense)
- “That’s a new one on me – proportional reporting ratios’ – I need to send this one to John.” – Martha Sharan to CDC colleagues, June 22, 2022 (FOIA response to The Epoch Times)
- “[P]rogram staff within the Immunization and Safety Office inform me that no PRRs were conducted by CDC. Furthermore, data mining is outside of the agency’s purview.” – Bruno Viana to Roger Andoh, June 30, 2022 (FOIA response to The Epoch Times)
- “CDC has been performing PRRs since Feb 2021, and continues to do so to date.” – Dr. John Su, July 18, 2022 (statement to The Epoch Times)
- “CDC has revisited several FOIA requests and as a result of its review CDC is issuing corrections. … In reference to Proportional Reporting Ratios (PRRs) – CDC performed PRRs from March 25, 2022 through July 31, 2022.” – Martha Sharan, Aug. 8, 2022. (statement to The Epoch Times)
- “CDC performed PRR analysis between March 25, 2022, through July 31, 2022. CDC also recently addressed a previous statement made to the Epoch Times to clarify PRR were not run between February 26, 2021, to September 30, 2021.” – Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Sept. 12, 2022 (letter to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.))
To be continued...
