The FDA Takes Its Turn Burying Studies Showing The Safety Of COVID, Shingles Vaccines

from the government-by-ostrich dept

The fuckery that is going on across HHS and vaccine programs is just plain incredible. As the Trump administration continues to provide whatever cover it can so that RFK Jr. can wreck shop on the health of Americans, the damage Kennedy is doing to our inoculation programs is going to take years, if not decades, to unwind. Led by a man who doesn’t believe in the foundational theory of modern medicine, America’s health agencies have begun to engage in direct misinformation campaigns via the censorship of real scientific information. Warnings about bogus autism treatments were removed from FDA websites. The CDC buried a report demonstrating how effective COVID vaccines are under dubious justifications.

And now it seems that it’s the FDA’s turn to likewise hide studies about the safety of COVID and shingles vaccines from the public.

The Food and Drug Administration blocked the publication of several studies supporting the safety of vaccines against Covid and shingles in recent months, a Health and Human Services Department spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. FDA scientists worked with data firms to analyze millions of patient records for the studies, which found side effects of the shots to be rare, The New York Times first reported on Tuesday. 

In October, the scientists were directed to withdraw two Covid shot studies that had been accepted for publication in medical journals, the Times reported. In February, top FDA officials did not sign off on submitting study abstracts on Shingrix, a shingles vaccine, to a drug safety conference, the paper added.

Now, spokespeople for HHS have stated that the studies were withdrawn because either they drew conclusions not supported by the data, or that the designs of the studies were done “outside of the agency’s purview.”

That’s bullshit. We all know it’s bullshit. And they know that we know it’s bullshit. And they simply don’t care, because this is not about medicine, or health, or even traditional politics. This is about the ego of one man, Kennedy, and his cohort of tinfoil hat wearing bumblefucks.

As the New York Times article itself quotes knowledgeable professors of medicine, this is censorship.

Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, a Harvard University medical professor who studies F.D.A. regulation, said he had worked with the agency on a number of research papers and found its work to meet “the highest standards of scientific investigation.” He suggested that the request to pull the papers was an act of “censorship.”

He added: “At any other time in history, this would be a major scandal that would lead to congressional hearings and resignations of leadership, and I hope that’s what happens next.”

These studies were seen by people who know what they’re talking about in the pre-publication stage. It’s not just Kesselheim who is pointing out that these studies seem both perfectly valid and very useful for evaluating the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. And the conclusions they draw are as full-throated as they are at odds with Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer nonsense.

Take one study, which worked to examine millions of health records for those who received a COVID shot at anywhere from 6 months old to 64 years old.

That study examined the records of 4.2 million Covid vaccine recipients and examined their later experience with 17 conditions, including swelling of the brain, major blood clots, stroke and heart attacks. The study found rare cases of fever-related seizures and myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, known to be associated with Covid vaccines.

“Given the available evidence, F.D.A. continues to conclude the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks,” the study said.

Angela Rasmussen, an editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said the paper had been withdrawn by the authors.

Dr. Caleb Alexander, a drug safety and methodology expert at Johns Hopkins University, reviewed both studies at the request of The Times and said that “no study answers every question” but “there is nothing inherently problematic regarding these reports.”

The point earlier was a good one: this is god damned scandal. Or, rather, it should be, except the talking heads on our televisions are far too busy covering every other scandal or ginned up controversy the administration creates, and more than half of our elected officials can’t be bothered to do real political combat out of fear of who knows what. And so the health of Americans is put at risk instead, because our government is made up of an unholy combination of crackpots and cowards.

At this point, I could be convinced that Kennedy and some portion of the government is actually attempting to cause people to die. I can’t understand another coherent motivation for this kind of censorship of scientific information, other than pure ego.

And if one man’s ego really is standing in the way of getting us back on track on matters of life and death, then impeach Kennedy and let’s get back to sanity. This really isn’t that complicated.

Filed Under: covid vaccines, fda, health & human services, rfk jr., science, shingles, shingles vaccine, studies, vaccines