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Pfizer and Israel’s Ministry of Health (MOH) knew in early 2021 about a significant “cardiac event” safety signal associated with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine — but withheld the information from physicians and the public for several months, a new peer-reviewed study has found.
The authors of the study, published last week in EXCLI Journal, reviewed an MOH dataset containing 531 hospitalization records dating from March 2021 — just months after the rollout of the mRNA Pfizer-BioNTech shot — to May 2022.
The records included 67 deaths, including nine in patients under age 50. Two of the nine deaths were attributed to myocarditis, which can lead to cardiac arrhythmia and death.
Myocarditis was recorded in 71.6% of the hospitalization records involving patients under 30. Nearly two-thirds of those patients “had no meaningful medical history” before their diagnosis.
The deaths and injuries were reported to Israel’s MOH and to Pfizer. Yet, public health authorities in Israel, the U.S. and elsewhere downplayed the safety signal, reporting it “only after a delay of approximately three to four months.”
Even then, health authorities described most cases as “rare” or “mild” — and of less concern than the risk COVID-19 posed.
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said none of the myocarditis deaths are found in the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), even though Pfizer was obligated to report the deaths to VAERS.
“The bereaved and the injured are owed an answer,” Jablonowski said.
Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, said the study’s findings are significant because they are based on “internal government data” instead of data from vaccine makers or from publicly available databases.
Kirsch said the data show that Israel’s MOH “was clearly more interested in protecting the manufacturers than the public.”
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, said the findings reflect a trend across multiple countries, in which public health authorities and Big Pharma hid the risks of the COVID-19 shots.
“I don’t think Israel is an outlier. Pharmaceutical companies, public health authorities, organized medicine, and academics worldwide have performed shamefully and betrayed our trust,” Orient said.
‘Generally short intervals’ between vaccination and injuries, deaths
The study presents a breakdown of the 531 hospitalization records and 67 death records in the Israeli MOH data, noting that these cases involved a significant number of younger patients. These cases were reported to Pfizer in 2021 and 2022.
“Reported events spanned cardiac, neurological, inflammatory, and other serious clinical categories and involved a substantial proportion of younger individuals, with 211 of 530 hospitalization records with valid age data (39.8 %) involving patients under 30 years of age,” the study states.
Other key findings from the study include:
- The two myocarditis-related deaths in people under 50 involved a 22-year-old woman and a 47-year-old man.
- An additional death of a younger adult — a 35-year-old man — was also identified. His record indicated “worsening heart failure” but did not mention myocarditis.
- Μyocarditis or pericarditis was identified in 250 of 531 hospitalization records (47.1%) and in 151 of 211 records (71.6%) of patients under 30.
- 48 patients under 18 were diagnosed with myocarditis or pericarditis.
- 134 of the 211 patients under 30 had “no meaningful medical history,” of which 99 of 134 were diagnosed with myocarditis and pericarditis — most of whom were male (90 out of the 99, or 90.9%).
According to the study, a significant number of records involving younger patients recorded the onset of “acute cardiac inflammation” that developed “within days to weeks of vaccination.”
Though the study focused on myocarditis and pericarditis, the researchers’ review of the records also identified a “broad spectrum” of other “serious clinical events.” These injuries included:
- Other cardiac events, including arrhythmias, syncope and heart failure.
- Neurological disorders, including seizures, stroke, encephalitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome and cranial nerve palsies.
- Allergic reactions, including “suspected anaphylaxis.”
- Inflammatory and hematological conditions, including multisystem inflammatory syndrome and immune thrombocytopenic purpura.
- Other serious conditions, including acute kidney injury and sudden hearing loss.
The combination of detailed case-level clinical documentation, the “generally short intervals” between vaccination and injury, the formal reporting to Pfizer and the fact that the data were sourced from a government health authority support the study’s credibility, the authors said.
Pfizer was kept in loop about deaths in 2021-2022
Israel MOH records also showed Pfizer was kept in the loop about the deaths and hospitalizations, receiving nine such reports between March 2021 and May 2022.
The first report, dated March 25, 2021, included information on 157 hospitalizations and 46 deaths.
“Reports to Pfizer, which began no later than March 25, 2021, included a notable proportion of young individuals, including many for whom no meaningful medical history was identified,” the study states.
Yet, Pfizer — and public health authorities worldwide — sat on this information for weeks or months before revealing it to the public.
The study cited documentary evidence of these delays — and the subsequent downplaying of the severity of the serious adverse events related to the vaccine.
For instance, an October 2021 New England Journal of Medicine study found that early myocarditis cases were detected in Israel as early as January 2021 — only a month after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was released to the public.
On Feb. 28, 2021, Israel alerted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health authorities about approximately 40 myocarditis cases.
But this information didn’t become public until February 2023, following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that CHD submitted to the CDC.
In early March 2021, the CDC was warned about “large numbers” of myocarditis and pericarditis cases among young people in Israel.
A week later, officials from the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) circulated an internal response about the myocarditis cases reported in Israel, stating that no additional details about those cases were available.
Yet on April 26, 2021, the CDC and FDA denied that “safety signals” existed for myocarditis. It wasn’t until May 28, 2021, that the CDC issued a recommendation to all clinicians to report “all cases” of myocarditis or pericarditis.
The authors of the EXCLI Journal study suggested that the decision by public health authorities and Pfizer to sit on this information “may have had implications for clinical awareness and informed decision-making.”
Epidemiologist M. Nathaniel Mead, Ph.D., a McCullough Foundation scholar, agreed. “Informed consent should have included an age-and-sex-specific warning in time for them to say no, delay a second dose, or choose differently. Many men never got that chance.”
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Were more vaccine-related deaths concealed?
The study found that the dataset provided by Israel’s MOH appeared to have been revised several times, noting that later versions “added clinical information to existing records, revised diagnoses and reporting dates, and omitted some records.”
The omissions included a death report contained in an October 2021 version of the MOH’s dataset that was “no longer present in the December or any subsequent version.”
According to the study, the dataset contains no “methodological documentation” and “no formal audit trail identifying who made these changes or the reasons for them,” making it impossible to tell why these revisions were made based on the available data.
Later revelations show Israeli authorities continued to downplay the risks of the COVID-19 shot well into 2022. A leaked video from June 2022 revealed that researchers shared data with Israel’s MOH showing serious and long-term side effects linked to the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.
The video suggested that Israel’s MOH did not reveal this information to the expert committee that met later that month to decide on recommending the vaccine for children under age 5, or to leaders of Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine booster program.
Kirsch said the delayed public release of the data and the open questions that remain about how the data were entered and updated raise accountability concerns that span beyond Israel’s MOH and Pfizer to include the broader medical community.
“Nobody was fired. More importantly, no pro-vaccine doctor in the U.S. has expressed any outrage in the suppression of the Israeli safety data,” Kirsch said.
Orient said the study adds to evidence supporting the suspension and withdrawal of mRNA vaccines from the marketplace.
“There is no justification for the continued use of these vaccines. There should be no further iterations unless and until all questions are answered and benefit is shown to exceed risk — if ever. We should instead be concentrating on treatment.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Leaked Video Suggests Israeli Health Officials Covered Up Serious Safety Problems With Pfizer COVID Vaccine
- Pfizer Vaccine ‘Probably’ Linked to Heart Inflammation, Israeli Panel of Experts Concludes
- Pfizer Vaccine May Cause Heart Inflammation in People Under 30, Leaked Study Suggests
- Pfizer Quietly Studied Myocarditis in Children a Month Before FDA Authorized COVID Shots for Kids Ages 5-11
- Twitter Censors Senior Israeli Physician-Scientist Injured by Pfizer Vaccine
- Pfizer COVID Vaccine Linked to Rare Blood Clot Disorder, Israeli Researchers Say
