Unanswered Questions Regarding Covid Vaccine Injuries and Reported Deaths: 64 Days and Counting — Why Won’t the CDC Answer Our Questions?

The Defender first reached out to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 8 with a list of questions about COVID vaccine injury reports in VAERS, including ongoing investigations into reported deaths. Our questions remain unanswered.

Since Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccines received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), The Defender has tracked post-vaccine injuries reported by healthcare workers and vaccine recipients to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS).

We’ve also covered media reports of deaths and injuries among people recently vaccinated for COVID.

The latest VAERS data show that between Dec. 14, 2020 and April 30, a total of 157,277 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 3,837 deaths and 16,014 serious injuries following vaccination with Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines.

According to the CDC website, “the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.”

On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with a written list of questions about reported deaths and injuries related to COVID vaccines. We requested information about how the CDC conducts investigations into reported deaths, the status of ongoing investigations into deaths and injuries reported by the media, if autopsies were being conducted, the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a vaccine, and education initiatives to encourage and facilitate proper and accurate reporting.

After repeated attempts, by phone and email, to obtain a response to our questions, a health communications specialist from the CDC’s Vaccine Task Force contacted us on March 29 — three weeks after our initial inquiry.

The individual received our request for information from VAERS, but said she had never received our list of questions, even though employees we talked to several times said CDC press officers were working through the questions and confirmed the representative had received them. We provided the list of questions again along with a new deadline, but never received a response.

The Defender also followed up with the CDC’s media department, which told us the COVID response unit would be informed that the health communications specialist never responded. No explanation was given as to why our inquiries were ignored. We were told to call back, which we did numerous times.

We asked why the taxpayer-funded CDC seemed to respond to other news media outlets in a timely manner, but hasn’t responded to The Defender. No answer was provided. We were told someone would get back to us.

It has been 64 days since we sent our first email inquiring into VAERS data and reports, but still no response.

CDC investigations into reported deaths

Since EUA was granted for experimental COVID vaccines, the mainstream media has reported on many deaths following vaccines, and in those reports, stated the deaths were under investigation by the CDC.

We questioned the CDC about several of these investigations, whether autopsies were performed, what determines whether a vaccine causes or contributes to a death and where the public could access findings of investigations.

On Jan. 3, the Florida Health Department and CDC announced it was conducting an investigation into the death of Dr. Gregory Michael who died shortly after receiving Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. Dr. Jerry L. Spivak, an expert on blood disorders at Johns Hopkins University, told the New York Times he believed it was a “medical certainty” Pfizer’s vaccine caused Michael’s death.

On April 8, medical examiners established that Michael died of complications from ITP, but officially categorized the death as natural because, according to Darren Caprara, director of operations for the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department, there was “no medical certainty” the vaccine caused Michael’s death.

On Feb. 4, the media reported state and federal officials were investigating the death of a 58-year-old woman, Drene Keyes, in Virginia, who died from anaphylactic shock hours after receiving the first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine. An article published March 7 disclosed health officials had not conducted an autopsy on Keyes, leaving the family to procure an autopsy on their own.

Virginia State Health Commissioner Norman Oliver told public information officers in an email Feb. 5 that if reporters asked whether an autopsy was done, they should say “a full autopsy was not needed in order to ascertain whether the death was related to the vaccination.”

Oliver’s email was part of a public records request which revealed officials inside and outside the health department were concerned the death of Keyes, who is Black, could worsen vaccine hesitancy among minorities.

On Feb. 5, a 39-year-old woman from Ogden, Utah, died four days after receiving a second dose of Moderna’s vaccine. Kassidi Kurill died of organ failure after her liver, heart and kidneys shut down. She had no known medical issues or pre-existing conditions, according to her family. News reports noted Kurill’s death had been reported to VAERS.

Under-reporting to VAERS

The Defender asked the CDC if there is any mechanism in place to confirm whether healthcare providers are reporting to VAERS, or if the agency has any education initiatives in place to improve the rate and quality of reporting.