Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Thursday that many officials who tried to warn the public about potential problems with COVID-19 vaccines were pressured into silence and that it’s high time to admit that there were “significant” side effects that made people sick.
Dr. Redfield made the remarks in a May 16 interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation, during which he lamented the loss of public confidence in public health agencies because of a lack of transparency around the vaccines, which he said “saved a lot of lives” but also made some people “quite ill.”
“Those of us that tried to suggest there may be significant side effects from vaccines … we kind of got cancelled because no one wanted to talk about the potential that there was a problem from the vaccines, because they were afraid that that would cause people not to want to get vaccinated,” Dr. Redfield said.
In his role as head of the CDC, Dr. Redfield was part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, a project to surge COVID-19 vaccine development at a time during the pandemic when little was known about the virus and rapid vaccine rollout was widely seen as key to getting the outbreak under control and lockdowns lifted.
In September 2020, a few months before the first COVID-19 vaccines were given in the United States, Dr. Redfield testified before the Senate that COVID-19 represented the “most significant public health challenge to face our nation in more than a century” and that the prevailing view among scientists at the time was that the overall case fatality rate of the disease was somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6 percent in the United States.
“If you were to look right now at individuals under the age of 18, it’s about 0.01 percent; 19 to say 69, it’s more like 0.3 percent. And if you’re over the age of 70, it’s about 5 percent now,” he testified at the time.
While there’s lingering controversy about the severity of COVID-19, a recent study estimates that the global case fatality rate was 8.5 percent in February 2020 but had plunged to 0.27 percent in August 2022, meaning that the estimated relative risk reduction over that time was a whopping 96.8 percent.
In his interview on NewsNation, Dr. Redfield said that the vaccines that were developed as part of Operation Warp Speed were “important” and saved “a lot of lives.” However, despite their benefits, the drawbacks of the vaccines must be a matter of open discussion, he said.
“They’re important for the most vulnerable people, those over 60, 65 years of age. They really aren’t that critical for those who are under 50 or younger. But those vaccines saved a lot of lives, but they also—we have to be honest, some people got significant side effects from the vaccine,” he said.
“I have a number of people that are quite ill, and they never had COVID, but they are ill from the vaccine,” he continued. “And we just have to acknowledge that.”
The severity of COVID-19 remains a matter of debate because it’s unclear whether deaths were overcounted or undercounted due to various factors, such as lack of clarity around the role of underlying medical conditions in fatalities in cases where COVID-19 was listed as the primary cause, or underreporting of asymptomatic infections. Aside from the issue of whether people died “from” COVID-19 or “with” a positive test for SARS-CoV-2, there have also been questions about the role of secondary pneumonia caused by mechanical ventilation.
Either way, a study from January 2023 indicates that the global case fatality rate from COVID-19 has dropped dramatically over the course of the pandemic. Global case fatalities ranged from 1.7 to 39.0 percent in February to March of 2020, according to the study—but fell to below 0.3 percent in July to August 2022.
The researchers estimate that the risk of death from COVID-19 has dropped by 96.8 percent over the course of the pandemic.
Along with a decline in COVID-19 fatalities, there have been growing concerns about vaccine side effects, given that a significant number of vaccinated people have reported various adverse reactions.
The most common COVID-19 vaccine adverse events are those that affect the body generally, with fever, fatigue, and overall discomfort being the top three, according to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). But there are others.
For instance, heart muscle inflammation (myocarditis) and inflammation of the lining outside the heart (pericarditis) have both officially been acknowledged by the CDC as a known side effect of Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Nervous system disorders have also been reported, with such disorders being the third most common in the Pfizer trials, coming after general and muscle-related adverse events.
There have also been papers linking spike-protein-based COVID-19 vaccines to skin problems, a dull ringing in the ears known as tinnitus, visual impairments, blood clotting, and even death. Recent reporting from EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders“ programme indicates that the likelihood of death associated with COVID-19 vaccines (in close proximity to the shot rather than proven as caused by it) was over 100 times greater than for flu vaccines.
There are also concerns about a post-vaccination jump in excess deaths and disability.
The CDC still recommends that people of all ages receive a COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the potential side effects do not outweigh the potential harms of getting sick with COVID-19.
In a notice published in late April, the agency again called for adults aged 65 and older to get the latest version of the vaccines.
