Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have released an email from Dr. Janet Woodcock, then-Acting Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), dated May 27, 2021.
In the email, Dr. Woodcock wrote: “The symptoms do not fit together into a distinctive syndrome and most are not easily quantifiable or evaluated with standard laboratory testing.” She further noted that these issues were beyond the detection capabilities of existing systems such as VAERS, CDC’s active surveillance, and medical records. Dr. Woodcock also stated that health officials should conduct a study, adding: “I doubt the industry would support, for obvious reasons. But my experience is, that if you let a problem fester, then it will come back to bite you later and you are not prepared.”
According to Johnson’s office, Dr. Woodcock expressed concern that health officials had failed to warn the public when they identified safety signals. “They let people die and become permanently disabled because they didn’t want to cause ‘vaccine hesitancy,’” Johnson stated in a press release.
By May 27, 2021, VAERS had reported over 440,025 adverse events and 8,650 deaths globally, with 3,350 (39%) occurring within two days of vaccination. The FDA’s system had exceeded its worst-case scenario for December 2020 by a factor of approximately 2.6.
Johnson’s office also revealed that in March 2021, Dr. Ana Szarfman, a senior FDA official, warned that the agency’s algorithm for analyzing VAERS data was masking critical safety signals. The email obtained coincides with monthly data runs showing dozens of adverse events, including sudden cardiac death and pulmonary infarction.
Additionally, Johnson noted that since March 2021, doctors at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had been treating severe injuries from COVID-19 vaccines, with symptoms matching those reported to Dr. Woodcock.
In a separate context, Johnson disclosed that text messages from Dr. Fauci’s government phone on January 25, 2021 revealed his private concerns about the potential for mRNA vaccines to cause miscarriages in the first trimester.
