Fauci and Walensky degrade Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System before Senate committee
“This is an extraordinary virus, the likes of which we have not seen even close to in well over one hundred years … It’s a very wily virus that has fooled everybody all the time…”
That was Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking at a Senate committee hearing, “Addressing New Variants: A Federal Perspective on the COVID-19 Response,” on January 11, 2022. Dr. Fauci was testifying before the committee, as was Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC.
Around halfway through the hearing (approximately at the two-hour mark), Senator Tommy Tuberville starts what appears at first to be a promising probe of federal response to the COVID crisis, saying, “This administration has been in charge of the federal COVID response for a year; I have to say I don’t think it’s been a job well done.”
Tuberville goes on to question a hugely expensive drug developed by Pfizer to treat coronavirus, when Ivermectin costs “a nickel a pill,” but puts up no protest when Dr. Fauci assures him that clinical trials have demonstrated the remarkable efficacy of Paxlovid – witness no deaths in the Paxlovid group as opposed to “a few” in the placebo group.
He later asks Dr. Walensky to comment on a recent statement made by Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, who claimed that, “As we speak, there are 100 thousand children in hospital sick with Omicron, a lot of them seriously ill.” “Is that true?” asks Tuberville? “True or false?”
It’s a question to which one might reasonably assume the head of the Centers for Disease Control would have an answer.
“I don’t have the numbers right now,” replies Walensky, adding, “it’s likely less than 100 thousand.”
But there was more to come. Tuberville again addresses Dr. Walensky: “It has been reported by some virologists and scientists that this year, around 170 people have died from taking the regular flu vaccine."
“The Vaccine Adverse Reporting System reported that the number of people dying after or following the COVID vaccine is actually in the thousands,” he then notes. “Now, this is what I am hearing. I’ll give you a chance to refute that or confirm it here. Is this true?”
VAERS was established by the CDC precisely in order to record such adverse events. But CDC head Dr. Walensky “refuted” that: “Thank you, Senator Tuberville, for that question. Senator, the VAERS is a mandatory system for any adverse event after being vaccinated. So, if you get hit by a car tragically after being vaccinated, that gets reported in the vaccine adverse event reporting system.”
Unfortunately, Senator Tuberville did not press her on that point, instead allowing her to continue: “The vaccines are incredibly safe. They protect us against Delta; they protect us against Omicron; they protect us against COVID; they don’t protect us against every other form of mortality out there.”
Dr. Fauci was asked to explain: “I think part of the confusion is if you do the reporting, if you get vaccinated and you walk out and get hit by a car (laughs), that is considered a death.”
He continues: “So if I had metastatic cancer and got vaccinated and died two weeks later, that’s a death that gets counted.” Counted as what? He doesn’t say.
Senator Tuberville asks Dr. Walensky: “Do we keep numbers of people who die after taking this vaccine? I’m just asking.”
VAERS does keep numbers (over 21 thousand deaths at the time of this exchange), so Walensky replies, “Absolutely!” But she doesn’t know the true number: “I can’t give you the absolute number off the top of my head, but my staff can absolutely get back to you.”
Walensky also claims that all the deaths recorded as vaccine-related by VAERS are “adjudicated.” That’s not true, but it would be interesting to know what adjudication would make of a “car-crash death” such as the following one, recorded by VAERS:
She started having breathing problems/heart attack appearance. on 1/22/21 and went to the ER. Upon admittance was told it was an anaphylactic shock from the COVID shot. They kept her in ICU and released her 1/23/21. At 12:45 am on 1/24/21 she passed out and we called the ambulance. Hospital admitted her and worked through multiple organ failure issues and thought her numbers were under control. She was released on 1/27/21 and was driving on 1/28/21 around 4:15 pm and appears to have had heart failure and had a wreck. She passed away that day.
