US government studies into vaccine safety are being suppressed

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has withdrawn two peer-reviewed Covid-19 vaccine safety studies after political appointees refused to approve their submission. One study analyzed 7.5 million Medicare beneficiaries for adverse outcomes after vaccination, finding only anaphylaxis at one per million Pfizer-BioNTech doses exceeded statistical noise. A second examined 4.2 million recipients aged six months to 64 years, confirming rare but labeled risks like febrile seizures and myocarditis. The FDA also blocked the submission of Shingrix safety abstracts to a major drug-safety conference in February, citing unsupported conclusions—a process that contradicts standard peer-review protocols. The agency previously released a memo linking 10 child deaths to Covid-19 vaccines without substantiation, highlighting a pattern of suppressing reassuring data while promoting alarmist claims. In late November, the FDA’s own center published a memo about vaccine-related child deaths, which was widely reported, while the two suppressed studies—covering nearly 12 million doses—were never released. This selective transparency raises concerns about regulatory capture, where politically driven decisions override scientific integrity. The CDC, meanwhile, has lost a quarter of its workforce in a year and faces editorial interference in its weekly journal. With measles cases surging in Mexico (over 9,000 since February 2025) and U.S. vaccination rates below the 95% threshold for herd immunity, the upcoming FIFA World Cup in North America (June 11–July 9) presents heightened public health risks. Local health systems, including emergency rooms in Los Angeles, report disrupted surveillance channels, further reducing transparency. The suppression of vaccine safety data coincides with broader erosion of public health communication, as critical health alerts—such as respiratory clusters—are no longer reliably disseminated through standard channels like the MMWR or CDC dashboards. This breakdown in transparency risks undermining trust in vaccine safety and disease surveillance during a period of heightened health risks.