The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has publicly admitted for the first time that the agency provided false information about its monitoring of the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director, said in a letter released Sept. 12 that the CDC has not analyzed certain types of adverse event reports at all in 2021, despite the agency previously saying it began in February 2021.
“CDC conducted the PRR analysis between March 25, 2022 and July 31, 2022,” Walensky said. “CDC also recently addressed an earlier statement made to the Epoch Times to clarify that the PRR did not run from February 26, 2021 to September 30, 2021.”
Walensky’s agency had promised in several documents, starting in early 2021, to conduct a type of analysis called a Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) on reports submitted to the Adverse Vaccine Event Reporting System, which it helps in management.
But the agency said in June that it had not conducted the PRR. He also said that their execution was “out of line.”[e] competence of the agency.”
Faced with the contradiction, Dr. John Su, a CDC official, told The Epoch Times in July that the agency began conducting PRR in February 2021 and “continues to do so to this day.”
But just weeks later, the CDC said Su was wrong.
“CDC conducted PRRs from March 25, 2022 through July 31, 2022,” a spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in August.
Walensky’s new letter, dated Sept. 2 and sent Sept. 6 to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), indicates that Walensky is aware that her agency provided false information.
‘There was a lack of justification’
Walensky’s letter did not include any explanation as to why this happened.
The letter “lacked any justification as to why CDC conducted PRRS during certain periods and not others,” Walensky told Johnson, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations, in a response.
“You also gave no explanation as to why Dr. Su… completely contradicts the CDC [initial] response … as well as your response of September 6, 2022 to me,” he added.
He demanded answers from the CDC about the situation, including why the CDC did not conduct PRRs until March and why the agency misled the public when it said no PRRs had been conducted.
The CDC and Walensky did not respond to requests for comment.
“At no time did any CDC employee knowingly provide false information,” a CDC spokesperson, when correcting the agency’s previous responses, told The Epoch Times via email in August.
The spokesman claimed the false information was provided because the CDC thought The Epoch Times and Children’s Health Defense, which received the first response, were asking about a different type of analysis called Empirical Bayesian data mining. But both The Epoch Times and Children’s Health Advocacy specifically listed PRRs in their questions.
Raising stones
The CDC has not yet released the results of the PRRs that were conducted to The Epoch Times. She also did not give them to Johnson. The Food and Drug Administration, which has conducted empirical Bayesian data on Adverse Vaccine Event Reporting System reports, recently declined to release any of the results to The Epoch Times.
Walensky claimed in the new paper that empirical Bayesian data mining is more reliable and that the PRR results were “generally consistent with EB data mining, revealing no unexpected additional safety signals.”
“However, because of your failure to provide these analyzes to Congress and the American people, the public cannot verify your assertion,” Johnson said.
He added that CDC’s “general lack of transparency is unacceptable especially in light of CDC’s inconsistent statements on this matter.”
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Zachary Stieber covers US and world news. He is based in Maryland.
