CDC Downplayed News of Vax Myocarditis
Officials delayed public awareness by slow walking reports of this adverse event
With the recent discovery that the CDC drafted — but never sent — a Health Alert in May 2021 about myocarditis after mRNA vaccination, I put together this timeline about vaccine myocarditis news and updates from government officials. I include a combination of documents from CDC and FDA, as well as what was covered in the mainstream media.
I think this timeline shows a pattern in which CDC & FDA failed to adequately investigate and inform the public about the risks of myocarditis early in the vaccine rollout. However, there was public acknowledgement by the CDC, as early as May 20, 2021, about a potential pattern of myocarditis after the 2nd dose of mRNA vaccines, particularly in young men.
On June 1, 2021, the CDC confirmed that they had identified a higher than expected signal of myocarditis for young men after mRNA vaccination, but that they still recommended Covid vaccination for everyone in this age group. Despite a lot more analysis and discussion of myocarditis after that, and a changing landscape with widespread natural immunity, the CDC & FDA position has changed very little since that time.
February - March 2021
As Zachary Stieber and Lia Onely reported last fall in The Epoch Times, we now know that Israel first warned the CDC about a potential myocarditis signal in 16-30 year-old recipients as early as February 28, 2021, and that US government officials completed an internal review was completed by March 9, 2021. However, it took nearly two more months before there were any public reports in the US about the potential for myocarditis after Covid vaccination.
NOTE: Zachary Stieber has done more to investigate and report on the government’s knowledge of myocarditis from Covid vaccines than anyone I know. He maintains an excellent and extremely thorough timeline of his findings here.
April 2021
April 25, 2021: Israel’s Health Ministry announced they were investigating a link between myocarditis and the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, particularly in young men.
April 26, 2021: Military.com reported that the Department of Defense is tracking cases of myocarditis after Covid vaccination among troops.
April 27, 2021: Walensky said that she was in touch with the US DoD about the cases found in the military, she claimed that the CDC had not seen a signal for vaccine myocarditis. “We have not seen a signal and we've actually looked intentionally for the signal in the over 200 million doses we've given.”
May 2021
May 11, 2021: Matt Oster, a pediatric cardiologist and a member of the CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, emailed the CDC to share increasing concerns regarding vaccine myocarditis, stating: “I'm starting to get more and more concerned about myocarditis in adolescents and young adults following COVID-19 vaccination.”
Dr. Oster added in a follow-up email on May 12, 2021: “I keep hearing about more and more cases, and the story is almost always the same: <30 (usually teen), usually male but not always, onset typically 2-4 days after 2nd dose, high troponins, admitted but usually with quick resolution of symptoms/troponin/echo findings…”
May 12, 2021: ACIP recommended Covid-19 vaccines to children ages 12-15, following FDA authorization (EUA) on May 10, 2021. CDC Director signed off on the ACIP recommendation.
May 20, 2021: A statement from the May 17 VaST Work Group meeting was posted on the CDC website: “VaST concluded that there are relatively few reports of myocarditis to date.” The statement claimed — illogically — that while the reports typically occurred within 4 days after dose 2 of mRNA vaccines, they did not differ from expected baseline rates. The fact that they more often occurred within 4 days after dose 2 of mRNA vaccines would seem to indicate that was not part of the expected baseline of myocarditis. This announcement led to a story in the New York Times.
May 20, 2021: Oregon Health Authority issued an email alert to doctors about vaccine myocarditis. (Emails obtained by Zachary Stieber of Epoch Times show that the CDC alerted state vaccine safety liaisons about reports of myocarditis/pericarditis on May 19th.)
May 21, 2021: Email sent from Dr. Demetre Daskalakis to others at CDC, regarding the draft of a HAN (Health Alert Network) advisory on vaccine myocarditis. The email specifically mentioned calls with Oregon and California. This HAN advisory was never sent.
NOTE: We do not have a copy of the draft HAN at this time, but based on other CDC emails and documents from around this period, I suspect that the alert would have stated that cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported shortly after vaccination with Covid mRNA vaccines, but that a link had not been confirmed. It would have likely also provided information about potential symptoms and diagnostic tests to perform, and encouraged doctors to be on alert for this condition and report cases to VAERS promptly, while reiterating the CDC recommendation for Covid-19 vaccination for ages 12 and older.
HAN advisories are frequently covered by the US media, so it is possible that the decision not to release a HAN was due to the CDC opting to notify medical professionals about the concerns via methods that would be less likely to trigger widespread reporting by the US media.
May 21, 2021: The same day as the draft HAN was being discussed, the Seattle / King County Public Health issued their own Health Advisory about vaccine myocarditis. A portion of the advisory is shown below. A later portion of the advisory states, “At this time it is not clear if there is a causal association with vaccination.” The advisory also referenced the statement from the VaST meeting on May 17.
May 27-28, 2021: CDC published public guidance about vaccine myocarditis and clinical considerations on their website, acknowledging that increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported in the US after mRNA vaccination, but that “CDC continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 12 years of age and older….” These pages did NOT indicate that the rates after vaccination were outside expected rates or that any causal link had been established.
June 2021
June 1, 2021: A statement from the May 24 VaST Work Group meeting was posted on the CDC website finally acknowledging a potential safety signal: “there was a higher number of observed than expected myocarditis/pericarditis cases in 16–24-year-olds.”
June 1, 2021: An official report by the Israeli Ministry of Health determined that rates of vaccine myocarditis among young men, ages 16 to 24 were between one in 3,000-6,000, as reported in Science and New York Magazine.
June 3, 2021: The first children aged 12-15 to be vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine became eligible to receive their second doses of the vaccine (3 weeks after first shots began).
June 10, 2021: FDA VRBPAC meeting discussed vaccine myocarditis as part of a larger vaccine safety presentation. This was covered briefly in the New York Times.
June 23, 2021: CDC’s ACIP meeting discussed vaccine myocarditis at length, including a VaST assessment, and a benefit-risk discussion. The VaST presentation acknowledged that there was a likely association of myocarditis with mRNA vaccination. However, the benefit-risk analysis concluded that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks. The ACIP did recommend that the FDA place a warning about myocarditis on the EUA fact sheets for Covid vaccinations. The ACIP myocarditis discussion was covered by CNBC and The New York Times.
June 23, 2021: Immediately following the ACIP meeting, a joint statement was released by HHS, CDC, AAP, and others in support of the CDC’s decisions on vaccination and myocarditis. For those paying attention, it was very clear that the outcome of this meeting was pre-determined.
June 25, 2021: The FDA released updated EUA fact sheets for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that warned about myocarditis, but did not include any details about the groups at higher risk. CNN had a brief story on the updated fact sheets, but the myocarditis concerns still did not receive much media attention. Below is a screenshot from the Moderna fact sheet. (The Pfizer fact sheet used the same language, except with Pfizer-BioNTech in place of Moderna.)
June 29, 2021: MedPage Today published an op-ed by Dr. Vinay Prasad and others, including analysis done by mathematician Wes Pegden, critiquing the benefit-risk numbers presented by the CDC at the recent ACIP meeting.
July 6, 2021: MMWR released with findings from June 23 ACIP discussion of vaccine myocarditis risks.
NOTE: The summer of 2021 was a pivotal time for the rollout of Covid vaccines in young people. Many colleges and universities began mandating Covid vaccination for students, even though college-aged men were in the group most at risk for vaccine myocarditis, and second doses were being rolled out to those in the 12-15 age range. Despite recognition of the link between the vaccine and myocarditis, the official position was that vaccination was less of a risk than Covid.
July 16, 2021: WIRED Magazine published an article by David Zweig, “The CDC Owes Parents Better Messaging on the Vaccine for Kids,” detailing much of the controversy behind the CDC’s nuance-free messaging on Covid vaccination for young people:
“Walensky cited a string of statistics that showed ‘the benefits of vaccination far outweigh any harm.’ But some epidemiologists, public health experts, pediatricians, cardiologists, and other scientists dispute the CDC’s numbers, characterizations, and conclusion. The agency, they variously contend, is both exaggerating the risks of Covid-19 to young people and underplaying the potential risks of the vaccine to them.”
Fall 2021 & Later…
October 6-7, 2021: Scandinavian countries made headlines for limiting Moderna vaccines for young men. This news received some coverage in the US, including stories by Reuters, AP, and Wall Street Journal. The CDC never officially acknowledged that myocarditis rates were often found to be higher after Moderna vaccines, as compared to Pfizer vaccines. (The higher rate with Moderna was brought up as a question as early as the June 23 ACIP meeting, but the response was that the numbers were too small to draw a conclusion at that time.)
November 19, 2021: When the FDA granted EUA authorization for boosters for ages 18+, they released updated fact sheets for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines with revised warnings about myocarditis, adding that it was more common in males under the age of 40. Below is a screenshot from the Moderna fact sheet. (The Pfizer fact sheet used the same language, except with Pfizer-BioNTech in place of Moderna.)
February 22, 2022: In an update to the Clinical Considerations for Use of Covid-19 Vaccines, CDC finally suggested an 8-week interval between mRNA doses may lower the risk of myocarditis after the second dose. This is nearly a year after some experts started calling for extending second doses to reduce myocarditis risks.
It also included a section about myocarditis under “Patient Counseling,” explicitly stating that patients — “especially males ages 12-29” — should be made aware of the risk of myocarditis and/or pericarditis, and about the need for medical attention if symptoms develop shortly after vaccination.
April 1, 2022: The CDC released a controversial MMWR analysis of cardiac complications after Covid versus vaccination, claiming that in teen boys and young men, cardiac complications from Covid were higher than after mRNA vaccination. This analysis was based on electronic health records, so it only included Covid cases that were severe enough to seek medical attention, skewing the myocarditis after Covid rates higher. NBC News reported on this, explicitly stating that it “may be reassuring to those reluctant to get their teenage boys vaccinated.”
Timing Unknown: At some point in 2022 or 2023, vaccine fact sheets added additional information about specific age groups most affected by vaccine myocarditis.
Moderna: males 18 through 24 years of age
Pfizer: males 12 through 17 years of age
I haven’t been able to determine when these age ranges became part of the official communications about the vaccines. As far as I can tell, the 18-24 age group first appears on the Moderna website in a January 31, 2022 press release, and the 12-17 age group first appears on the Pfizer website in an July 8, 2022 press release. However, I could not confirm these age groups were consistently listed in vaccine fact sheets until the release of the 2023/2024 version of the vaccines (based on the XBB variant) in September 2023. It is difficult to locate all the old vaccine fact sheets, so I’m not certain when this language was consistently included, but here is a Pfizer EUA Fact Sheet from December 2022 listing the age range.
The FDA also added additional myocarditis symptoms that may be seen in children to some vaccine fact sheets. I believe, but am not certain, that these additional symptoms were only listed beginning with the release of the 2023/2024 version of the vaccines (based on the XBB variant) in September 2023:
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Thanks for compiling this. I don't recall where it fell in the timeline but an important moment for me was the David Zweig piece in Wired where he carefully explained the flaws of the CDC's methodology for downplaying myocarditis. That mattered because it was printed in a mainstream magazine and the facts stated were very clear. From that moment forward every journalist, "public health" expert or so on who pretended to know nothing about this was explicitly averting their eyes.
The suspicion is that the CDC, maybe under explicit orders from Biden, went ahead with universal vaccine recommendations despite the carditis problem because, as we've heard indications of, the agency didn't want to send any nuanced messages that could lead to "hesitancy."