"For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children."
mostly skip the news stories
A long and thoughtful email message sent to FDA staff on Friday afternoon by CBER director Vinay Prasad finally concedes that “at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination.” This, the message says, is a conservative number limited by the ability of investigators to clearly prove causation: “These deaths are related to vaccination (likely/probable/possible attribution made by staff). That number is certainly an underestimate due to underreporting, and inherent bias in attribution.”
The news stories about this development are mostly garbage, reporting in predictable language on mean anti-vaxxers who hate science. Among the legion of the outraged, the New York Times reacts to the memo in roughly the same way the pope responded to Martin Luther: “The memo represents another escalation of broadsides on vaccines by federal authorities under Mr. Kennedy, who has used his position as secretary to repeatedly raise doubts about inoculations and name other skeptics to positions of authority.”
He’s raising doubts! He’s elevating skeptics! He’s feeding heresy to the unbelievers! Imagine this being “the news.” The New York Times has no informational purpose, and now exists only to scold intellectual heterodoxy. As always, they have Prasad’s message, and they describe it, but they don’t provide it. You just have to read their interpretation, because the holy texts are written only in Latin, and only the cleri— sorry, I keep getting my events mixed up.
But the Daily Caller also reports on Prasad’s memo, and — this is always a test of intellectual integrity — they also provide it, all of it, so you can see it yourself. You can click over there to find the link, or read this PDF file:
It’s an astonishing piece of government communication. It acknowledges prior agency dishonesty, concedes the limits of the current analysis, and frankly discusses the harms caused by medical coercion: “This is a profound revelation. For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children. Healthy young children who faced tremendously low risk of death were coerced, at the behest of the Biden administration, via school and work mandates, to receive a vaccine that could result in death.”
When have you ever heard a government official talk this way?
I strongly encourage you to read Prasad’s memo for yourself, and to do it before you read interpretations of it from journalists and public health officials. There’s a surprise at the end, and I like it, but I want you to discover it for yourself.
Vinay Prasad works for Donald Trump, who’s still talking about how brilliant the Covid-19 vaccines are. This will be an interesting political event on many levels. Also to be watched: how pharmaceutical regulators in other countries respond, and who else now comes forward with comparable evidence.
Prasad: “I have seen no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines, which do not halt transmission, benefit third parties.” This heresy against the quasi-religion of the public health expert class would have gotten you thrown off social media platforms a very few years ago. It’s now the explicit statement of the senior federal official in charge of vaccine approval.
NY Times, 1971: Proudly publishes the Pentagon Papers, revealing that the Johnson administration lied about the Vietnam War.
NY Times, 2025: Complains that Trump is revealing that the Biden administration lied about the Covid vaccines.
The sub-headline on the NYT article is incredible:
“A top official proposed broad changes, claiming that a new review linked 10 children’s deaths to the Covid vaccine. But experts questioned the findings.”
During the Biden administration, you were by definition not an “expert” if you questioned the findings of “top officials.” The designation “expert” had little to do with credentials. Instead, it was reserved exclusively for those who agreed with top officials about everything.
Applying the same rules that applied during the Biden administration, the “experts” questioning Prasad’s findings are not experts at all, but rather dishonest purveyors of misinformation. They would be labeled the disinformation dozen and censored on social media. They would lose their jobs and be blacklisted in professional circles.
Funny how those rules applied under Our Democracy, but have been inverted under the present Fascist Dictatorship.