CDC Refused to Issue Alert About COVID Vaccine and Heart Inflammation for Fear of Causing Public Panic

An e-mail recently obtained by The Epoch Times reveals that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drafted, but never sent, an alert to the U.S. public about the link between COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) because CDC officials worried that people would panic. The e-mail, dated May 15, 2021, eight months after the CDC identified myocarditis as an adverse event of special interest or a potential side effect, contained conversations between CDC officials and pharmaceutical industry representatives about why an alert should not be issued.^{1 2}

CDC internal documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) also revealed that officials prepared to release an alert to the public, but the alert was never finalized or dispatched. Instead, the CDC sent alerts encouraging people to get vaccinated.

“The pros and cons of an official HAN (Health Alert Network) are what the main discussions are right now,” Sara Oliver, MD, MPH of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) wrote in the e-mail. “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 communicating with a Pfizer or Moderna representative, whose name and e-mail were redacted in the copy obtained by The Epoch Times.¹

According to the CDC, a HAN is its primary method of sharing cleared information about urgent public health incidents with public information officers; federal, state, territorial, tribal, and local public health practitioners; clinicians; and public health laboratories. In short, the alert, had it been sent, would have gone to state and local officials along with doctors administering vaccines in the U.S. ³

CDC’s Failure to Issue Formal Alert About Myocarditis Represents “Malpractice”

A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee launched a probe last summer into the COVID vaccine mandates and related policies enacted by the Biden administration during the COVID pandemic, demanding answers about the government’s decision to implement experimental vaccine mandates for federal workers and businesses with more than 100 employees. The CDC decision not to alert the public of the risk of myocarditis, a serious and potentially deadly heart inflammatory condition, adds another layer to the investigation into the controversial mandates that coerced millions of Americans to get vaccinated or risk losing their jobs.⁴

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,” said U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. “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.”¹

Myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammation of the membrane around the heart) were identified as potential adverse events before the COVID vaccine rollout in 2020. In 2021, the U.S. military saw an unusually high surge in myocarditis cases, with diagnoses jumping a staggering 130 percent compared to the average during the years 2016-2020, according to data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED).

Still, the then director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, addressed the public in 2021 around the same time the CDC was deciding against alerting the public, saying the agency had received no reports and that no signal had been triggered even though the CDC was in touch with U.S. military officials discussing surging cases of heart inflammation among service members. “What I will say is we’ve delivered over 200 million doses of vaccine—of these vaccines. And after hearing about these reports, we, again, looked back in our vaccine safety data, and we have not seen any reports of those,” Dr. Walensky stated in a press briefing.^{5 6}

FOIA E-mails Show FDA Influenced CDC’s Decision to Withhold Myocarditis Alert

According to emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by The Epoch Times, it is clear that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) influenced the CDC’s decision to withhold the post-vaccination myocarditis alert. According to an FDA spokesperson:

The FDA continues to work collaboratively with the CDC to monitor for known safety risks related to vaccines and determine how best to ensure any relevant safety information is conveyed to the public, health care providers and clinicians. After thorough assessment and when the potential risk was clear, the FDA updated the fact sheets for the COVID-19 vaccines and communicated with the public in a manner that was determined to be appropriate for the assessed risk.⁷

The FDA eventually added myocarditis as a potential adverse event to both Pfizer’s Comirnaty and Modern’s Spikevax mRNA {messenger ribonucleic acid) COVID shots on June 25, 2021.¹

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