Tag: covid-19

Study Claiming COVID Vaccines Benefit Heart Health ‘Hopelessly Flawed,’ Scientists Say

A new study linking COVID-19 vaccines to a significantly lower risk of heart attack and stroke joins “the latest in a growing body of research about the vaccine’s benefits for heart health,” according to The Washington Post, which reported on the study.

But Dr. Vinay Prasad, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, called the study “hopelessly flawed.”

Prasad, the former director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research before stepping down in April, and other scientists said the study’s methodological flaws skewed its findings.

“Not only should it not be in the news, the paper should not be in print,” Prasad wrote on Substack.

Canadian researcher Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., called the paper “outright bad science” that “should not be used whatsoever to ‘help inform clinical and public health discussions’ as they propose.”

The study, published last week in JAMA Internal Medicine, tied COVID-19 vaccination to a 37.7% lower risk of serious cardiovascular conditions, particularly among people 75 and older or people with comorbidities.

The authors also found that the vaccinated had a 6.2% lower risk of serious heart conditions overall and a 6.6% reduction in all-cause hospitalizations.

“Extrapolating these estimates to a population of 1 million people, vaccination could plausibly be associated with averting approximately 2370 [major cardiovascular] events and 1580 deaths over an 8-month period,” the study claims.

However, the researchers acknowledged that “the absolute benefit” of COVID-19 vaccination “was modest for the general cohort.”

Heart conditions such as myocarditis are widely associated with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, with reports of deaths connected to the vaccines, particularly among teenage and young adult males.

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Sen. Rand Paul: ‘Without Question’ Fauci Directed U.S. Funds to Wuhan for Gain-of-Function Research

“Without question” former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Anthony Fauci directed U.S. tax dollars to the Wuhan lab in China, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said during an interview on Breitbart News Daily.

Paul discussed the recent announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that Tulsi Gabbard released a trove of evidence that Fauci lied to Congress and directed U.S. funding for gain-of-function research linked to Big Pharma’s pursuit of “universal vaccines.”

Referring to the 120 biolabs in 30 countries (including Ukraine) for which Gabbard revealed “new evidence of longstanding United States government funding,” Paul said, “What I specifically want to know is what exactly the experiments are, because the establishment, the defenders of Anthony Fauci, said this is just a vaccination program for brucellosis for cows.”

“I don’t know. It seems like there might be more there. Why are we doing this in 30 different countries? Why are we doing this in countries that have wars going on? You know, it’s spread throughout a lot of places that you would think on a normal day would be at risk for some kind of military overthrow or having these pathogens released. So I think the real answer is going to be in the details of what the experiments are,” the senator said.

Paul said Fauci and his allies, however, argue that it is not gain-of-function research.

“People need to realize that this experimentation is so dangerous, and often farmed out to third world countries in obscure places — because here we have more scrutiny, and here people would be going, you know, not only are they torturing beagles, or whatever they do in Tunisia — they may also be doing research with viruses, creating viruses that don’t exist in nature, and then running them through animal models that have human lungs, and training the virus to be more adaptable to humans, which is what we think happened with COVID,” he said, describing these as “incredibly dangerous experiments” that “don’t have any value.”

“We’ve never really produced any kind of vaccine or any treatment from them. And making an animal virus into a human virus is not that hard to do, but we certainly shouldn’t be funding it,” he said.

When asked about the claim that Fauci “directed U.S. taxpayer dollars to gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China,” Paul replied, “Without question, he did.”

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A CIA Senior Official Personally Stopped Analysts From Concluding COVID Came From the Wuhan Lab.

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This is not a theory anymore. It is a documented fact with a paper trail.

When CIA analysts were privately concluding in the earliest days of the pandemic that the furin cleavage site in the COVID virus looked consistent with gain of function modification, a senior official at the CIA’s Weapons and Counterproliferation Mission Center personally intervened to stop them from shifting to a lab leak finding.

Not bureaucratic inertia. Not competing evidence. A person. Making a decision. To stop the conclusion the evidence was pointing toward.

On June 4th 2021 that same CIA center briefed Fauci on classified COVID origins intelligence from the President’s Daily Brief. During that briefing Fauci steered the agency toward consulting scientists who had publicly advocated for a natural origin. The scientists he recommended were the ones who had already staked out the position he needed them to hold.

Meanwhile a pre-pandemic Department of Energy warning to Fauci’s own agency about the risks of the Wuhan Institute of Virology research apparently never reached the analysts tasked with investigating the virus’s origin. The people investigating whether the lab caused the pandemic were never told their own government had already flagged that lab as dangerous before the pandemic started.

Then when a whistleblower filed a formal complaint alleging that classified intelligence contradicted Fauci’s sworn testimony to Congress, the Biden DNI’s office routed it not to an independent inspector general but to HHS Secretary Becerra, Fauci’s own boss, who had already indicated the matter was considered.

The FBI told Congress it had interviewed a key witness before reaching its lab leak conclusion. ODNI’s own records show that interview happened months after the FBI had already made its call. And when finally interviewed the witness said nothing about COVID origins at all.

This is not incompetence. Incompetence is random. This is a pattern running in one direction consistently protecting one man from accountability for five years.

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CDC Awards Pfizer $1.24 Billion for COVID Vaccines for Kids and Adults

The roughly $735 million pediatric and $505 million adult COVID-19 vaccine grants cover 2026 and 2027, according to federal records. The monetary infusion has revived debate among critics and public health experts around the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and reliance on mRNA technology.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent decision to award Pfizer $1.24 billion for COVID-19 vaccines has renewed debate over the government’s continued investment in mRNA technology.

The contracts, awarded on June 1, include about $735.7 million for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines and nearly $505.3 million for adult doses for fiscal year 2026-2027.

Critics say the funding reflects a continued commitment to vaccines associated with high rates of serious injuries and deaths, and a lack of adequate safety testing and monitoring.

Public health experts argue the investment is necessary to protect vulnerable populations and prepare for future outbreaks.

The latest contracts come as mRNA technology expands beyond COVID-19.

A recent review in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics found that mRNA-based therapeutics were identified in more than 550 registered clinical trials. The authors reported that more than 90% of the projects involved mRNA vaccines and that most products remain in early-stage testing before broader adoption.

‘Unnecessary and often harmful injections’

The procurement of monetary resources signals that federal officials intend to continue investing heavily in mRNA technology despite declining public demand and ongoing controversy over vaccine safety monitoring, critics say.

Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, told The Defender there was “no scientific justification” or “market demand” for the latest mRNA vaccine funding.

“This raises a serious question concerning how these captured agencies really work,” Tucker said. “We are talking about vast amounts of tax dollars flowing to support unnecessary and often harmful injections.”

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Rand Paul Issues Subpoena Forcing Fauci to Testify Under Oath

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Monday subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify publicly next month before the U.S. Senate, after Fauci backed out of a voluntary appearance.

Fauci will have to testify before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, which Paul chairs.

“Today, I have issued a subpoena requiring him to testify before the Committee, in public, next month,” Paul wrote in a post on X on Monday.

An inside source with knowledge of Paul’s plans told The Defender on condition of anonymity that Fauci is expected to testify under oath about “everything” — from his involvement in funding gain-of-function research that may have created COVID-19 to the subsequent cover-up of a possible lab leak.

In an interview with Semafor, Paul said he will also ask Fauci about the destruction of federal records and about the preemptive pardon former President Joe Biden granted him last year.

The pardon shields Fauci from federal prosecution for his official acts dating back to 2014.

“He’s been slow-walking information to us for six months or more,” Paul told Semafor. “We’ve been negotiating over the date for several months. He agreed, then he said he wouldn’t. So, I think it’s time that we bring him in. I think there’s a lot to discuss.”

Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” today, Paul credited U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for aiding in Paul’s COVID-19 origins investigation.

“We’ve gotten more evidence over the last year. From the Biden administration, they revealed nothing. From the Trump administration, particularly with Secretary Kennedy, we’ve gotten a lot of information,” Paul said.

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Fauci, The CIA, And The Unanswered Questions Of COVID

Did Anthony Fauci manipulate the intelligence community (IC) investigation of the origin of COVID as outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims?

Gabbard recently released previously unseen documents and communications during the COVID pandemic between the IC and the key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Anthony Fauci. She claims they show that Fauci and the IC coordinated the investigation of the origin of the COVID to suggest it was a natural occurrence rather than a laboratory leak. She further charges that the documents reveal Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments in an attempt to discourage the lab-leak hypothesis.

It is not clear that the released information shows this, and a careful reading suggests a more complicated scenario. But what the messages do show is that an undue emphasis on Fauci’s actions risks missing a more important point – the hidden connection between public health officials and the IC during the pandemic.

The two theories on where COVID originated are that the virus evolved naturally from bats to man via an intermediate animal host; or that the virus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The first was more widely accepted by scientists and most of the international press early in the pandemic, but the intermediate host has never been discovered so the theory remains speculative. The second theory, which has gained significant traction since initially being disparaged as conspiracy, is only circumstantial since no definitive proof exists. The answer as to how COVID originated remains unknown.

Where does Dr. Fauci, the government’s point man in the pandemic, fit in? He acknowledges the possibility of a lab leak, but initially came down firmly on the side of natural origin – aggressively so. He and his colleagues, notably his boss NIH director Francis Collins, attempted to publicly silence proponents of the lab leak theory. The rub is that Fauci was tangentially involved in “gain of function” viral manipulation research done in Wuhan and clearly misled Congress about this involvement.

Because gain-of-function research could have been responsible for the development of the virus in the Wuhan lab, this means Fauci has a conflict of interest on the COVID source: He could bear some responsibility for the entire affair if this was indeed a lab leak. So he has reason other than scientific inquiry to support the animal host theory. He is aware of that and has written in the past about the necessity and the attendant danger of doing gain-of-function research. He now strenuously denies it had anything to do with COVID.

Enter the IC and Gabbard’s document release.

There is uncertainty over whether Fauci frequented CIA offices early in the pandemic, something he was less than forthright about in his 2024 congressional testimony. It is unclear whether or how many times he was there, in part because a whistleblower claims the requirement to sign in was waived for Dr. Fauci. What is not in doubt are his contacts with the CIA after President Biden charged the IC with investigating the origin of COVID.

The CIA asked Fauci to provide recommendations for experts to consult in their investigation of the COVID origin; the extent of his influence on the agency’s investigation is unclear. At the time, some officials, aware of the potential conflict of interest, questioned in the documents whether relying on recommendations from someone deeply involved in coronavirus research could create the perception of improper influence regarding their findings. Nevertheless, the IC employed the experts Fauci recommended, who were never publicly identified. Their names have been redacted in communications and the information they provided has never been released.

The lack of transparency by the public health community and the CIA caused Republicans, led by Dr. Rand Paul, to suspect Fauci selected his CIA consultants based on their opposition to the lab-leak theory. Further, Paul proposed there was a self-justifying loop of information in which the medical experts put their thumbs on the scale of the IC report supporting natural origin. Public health officials (and some politicians who saw the lab-leak theory as a potential scandal) then turned around and used the “doctored” IC report to support the conclusions they provided to the public.

Neither of these accusations is supported or refuted by the released communications.

Again, despite Gabbard’s claims, there is no smoking gun in the released documents, and the IC did not reach a consensus on the origin of COVID. The larger point, however, is one the public knew little about: the incestuous connection between high-level public health officials and the IC during the pandemic. Making Fauci the bête noire does little to advance our knowledge of what actually happened or how to go forward.

This hardly exonerates Fauci: His actions bear scrutiny because of his disturbing pattern of behavior. (Criminal charges may be a bridge too far, and in any event he has a blanket presidential pardon). Besides misleading Congress about his involvement with gain-of-function research and his attempt to suppress the views of lab leak proponents, he obscured his connection with the IC investigation. When asked, he mocked it with a snide deflection as “a conspiracy that I parachuted in like Jason Bourne.” In addition, and almost forgotten today, he confessed to deliberately lying to the American public in the New York Times about “herd immunity” to COVID. This was not, as some claim, the result of incomplete information; he admitted consciously dissembling.

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Norwegian study shows that 74% of new myocarditis cases were related to COVID-19 vaccination – only 4.2% were related to COVID-19 infection

Myocarditis – inflammation of the heart muscle – is a “serious condition” and a frequent cause of sudden death in young, apparently healthy people, with a 50–60% mortality rate “after five years.” The statement by Prof. Jan Erik Nordrehaug is somewhat outdated, but later research by Mi-Jeong Kim and colleagues shows the same trend with a mortality rate of approximately 40% after 10 years (see the article’s Figure 3 below).

As early as April 2021, the European Medicines Agency suspected that the COVID-19 vaccine could cause myocarditis, but Pfizer/BioNTech still decided to approve it for children as young as 12 years old. This is despite the fact that the vaccine had not even been tested for transmission and that practically no children die from COVID-19 infection. Later research has strengthened the Agency’s suspicions of an increased incidence of myocarditis among COVID-19 vaccine recipients, especially young men.

Dramatic numbers from Norway

A recently published Norwegian study by Bendik Skinningsrud Hagen and colleagues also shows that COVID-19 vaccination is particularly associated with myocarditis in young men (see figure 2 below in the article, which shows the incidence in men and women). What is most surprising, however, is that the vaccine causes 74% of cases (the article’s figure 1 shows 177 cases compared to 108 others, of which 42 are excluded because myocarditis occurred before vaccination and 4 are due to misdiagnosis). The authors claim that most were “mild” – let’s hope so – but Nordrehaug’s statement that the mortality rate is 50-60% “after five years”, and the figure from Mi-Jeong Kim and colleagues showing low mortality in the first years that then increases, tells us that we do not yet have the full picture.

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FDA Altered Autopsy Results of Children Who Died After COVID Vaccines

Scientists at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revised the autopsy results of children who died after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, reducing the number of children the agency classified as having likely died as a result of their vaccination, according to documents released last week by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

The documents show that in November 2025, the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) identified 10 child deaths related to the COVID-19 shots. But in December 2025, it reduced the number to seven and downgraded the probability that those deaths were connected to the children’s vaccination.

The Daily Caller, which first reported, quoted two former FDA officials and a forensic pathologist who performed two of the children’s autopsies. One of the FDA officials told the outlet the emails reveal “a coverup” by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Johnson included the documents in a letter sent last week to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CDC Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya and FDA Acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas.

Even the reduced number of deaths was enough to trigger concern among some FDA scientists about the safety of the COVID-19 shots, Johnson’s letter stated.

“Although what drove the decision to change these three cases remains to be seen, what is clear is that these officials appear to have determined that the seven cases warranted warning about the risks,” Johnson wrote. These risks “should have raised serious concerns at HHS and CDC about the mRNA COVID-19 Injections.”

Even after the downgrade, the FDA’s Division of Pharmacovigilance recommended revising the label of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to include a warning about the risk of “myocarditis with fatal outcomes.”

The change was never made, for reasons that are not clear.

Myocarditis is widely associated with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and, with reports of deaths connected to the vaccines, particularly among teenage and young adult males.

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CIA Official Confirms Agency Flip-Flopped Over COVID-19 Origins Over Five-Day Period

Over the span of five days in 2021, the CIA abruptly changed its opinion on the origins of COVID-19 from a laboratory to neutral, a newly released document confirms.

Originally, CIA analysts concluded that COVID-19 likely came from a high-level laboratory in Wuhan, China located near where the first cases were detected in late 2019, senior CIA officer James Erdman III told lawmakers in May. Over the span of five days in 2021, however, Edman says the agency changed its stance to ‘neutral.’ 

Then in September of 2024 during a private briefing between intelligence officials and members of Congress, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) inquired as to how the agency came to the conclusion that lab-origin vs. natural origin were about equal, according to yesterday’s document release by outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard. 

In response, an unnamed CIA employee told Wenstrup that “he made the call to stop the shift to lab because [redacted] had come in the day before they were ready to publish which made them back off the call,” according to a summary of the briefing compiled by an intelligence official. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, officials said in a declassified assessment based on information through August 2021 that only one agency – which was not the CIA, based on details since made public – favored a lab origin for COVID-19.

An updated assessment released in mid-2023 states that the CIA was unable to determine the origin of COVID-19 because both the lab and natural origin theories “rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.”

The CIA said in 2025 that a lab origin for COVID-19 was “more likely.” The Trump administration maintains that COVID-19 came from the lab in China.

More on Changes

A whistleblower in 2023 told members of Congress that the CIA team tasked with analyzing the origins of COVID-19 favored a lab origin, but that after the team was paid, it changed its position.

The CIA at the time denied paying analysts to reach specific conclusions.

Erdman, the senior CIA official, told a Senate panel in May that he was on a team investigating how intelligence agencies handled the COVID-19 pandemic and that the CIA declined to provide documents the team had requested that may have shed light on the change.

Erdman said that the team found the shift happened after Dr. Anthony Fauci, at the time the head of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – which provided funding for the lab in Wuhan – briefed intelligence officials and suggested to officials that they talk to specific scientists, including researchers who wrote a paper with which Fauci and the institute’s head secretly assisted.

The paper, called “Proximal Origin,” purported to rule out a laboratory origin.

Wenstrup also asked intelligence officials in the 2024 briefing about a white paper that National Center for Medical Intelligence analysts compiled as a rebuttal to the “Proximal Origin.” The authors of the white paper felt their conclusions were ignored by intelligence officials, they informed Wenstrup.

A representative for the center was not prepared for the questioning, “which annoyed Wenstrup,” according to the briefing summary.

Fauci Briefed Intelligence Officials

Fauci briefed intelligence officials on June 4, 2021, and promoted the idea that COVID-19 had a natural origin, according to another briefing summary released by Gabbard.

Fauci “recommended that [intelligence officials] take a look at Tulane’s paper on two lineages from two separate markets,” the summary states. “To Dr. Fauci, this paper’s findings were a clear indication of natural origins of COVID-19.”

Fauci also “reminded the group that even for SARS, it took 12 years to make the link to a bat even though it only took 4 months to identify the natural reservoir” and that “we still haven’t identified source/origin of Ebola,” which is believed to have a natural origin, according to the summary.

Fauci, who has not responded to requests for comment, told lawmakers during a hearing in 2024 that he did not talk about viral research related to COVID-19 with intelligence officials.

“After the investigations began about COVID, I was briefed by intelligence agencies about possibilities of there being activities going on in different laboratories,” he said.

In another readout of the 2021 briefing, Fauci was said to have suggested intelligence officials connect with three scientists whose names were redacted.

“All three … have advocated for features of the virus that they judge to be consistent with a natural origin,” the readout states.

An email disclosed that one of the scientists was Kristian Andersen, a Scripps Research researcher who coauthored the “Proximal Origin.”

Andersen said in private messages with coauthors that COVID-19 may have been engineered before the paper was published. He has said that further analysis of the virus altered his and others’ views.

“Dr. Fauci was the behind-the-scenes adviser who, alongside his hand-picked so-called experts, pushed the intelligence community to endorse a natural animal origin to hide his dangerous gain-of-function research that he funded using taxpayer dollars,” Gabbard said in a video statement posted to X on June 18.

“All of this in a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth and shift the blame and attention away from Fauci’s own actions.”

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Turns Out ‘Trust the Science’ Came With Receipts

Tulsi Gabbard’s last day as the director of national intelligence is upon us, after she resigned because of a major illness in the family. In her resignation note to the president, she cited her husband Abraham Williams’ recent diagnosis with sacral chordoma — an extremely rare tumor that develops in the sacrum at the base of the spine. In her resignation, she wrote that “He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”

That said, there is good news there. The surgery to remove bone and surrounding tissue lasted almost seven hours and was described as successful. Gabbard shared that he had a rough night following that surgery and was in a lot of pain, but was finally home resting, adding “Now recovery begins.”

Gabbard also expressed gratitude for the public support: “We’re so grateful for the outpouring of prayers and kind messages from all of you. Our hearts are full.”

As wonderful as that news is, and as cheered as I am about it, alas! That’s where the feel-good part of this piece ends.

And here are the documents she declassified and released:

COVID-19 Release Index
COVID-19 Release Part 1
COVID-19 Release Part 2
COVID-19 Release Part 3
COVID-19 Release Part 4 

The ODNI press release accompanying the release states that Anthony Fauci, as head of NIAID, 

provided millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — work the release describes as “widely viewed” as the source of an unintentional lab leak.

I spent some time last night — several hours in fact — going over these documents that I’ve linked above. They lay out the flat-out accusations of Fauci of teaming up with his fellow travelers in the Intelligence Community to kill the lab-leak hypothesis and bury his own fingerprints on the research funding.

And apparently that wasn’t enough — these documents show three specific roles for him:

  • Fauci caused our government to bankroll reckless and illegal gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan while chasing the trillion-dollar dream of “universal vaccines,” an item worth billions to Big Pharma; 
  • Fauci worked the phones behind the scenes to steer IC analysts toward a convenient (and false) natural-origin conclusion; 
  • Fauci then stood in front of cameras playing the part of America’s trusted pandemic czar and — per the release — fed the public a steady diet of lies, disinformation, and censorship.

Quite the résumé, wouldn’t you say? But wait, there’s more!

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