- Internal emails from New York's medical examiner office show officials privately debated vaccine safety while publicly declaring shots safe.
- A 16-year-old boy died four days after his second Pfizer dose, with heart abnormalities resembling stress cardiomyopathy rather than typical myocarditis.
- FDA officials knew their safety algorithm was flawed and suppressed a doctor who proposed fixes, The BMJ investigation reveals.
- CDC failed to perform required proportional reporting ratio analyses until 2022, despite promising them from vaccine rollout start.
- Medical examiners clashed over whether to dismiss vaccine safety concerns as "misinformation" or examine evidence.
Why this matters: Two separate investigations published in November 2026 have revealed that U.S. health officials knowingly relied on a compromised safety detection system for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and silenced efforts to fix it, while medical examiners privately debated deaths following vaccination that contradicted public assurances of safety.
Who uncovered it: The BMJ investigative reporter David Willman, attorney Jimmy Wagner through New York Freedom of Information Law requests, and U.S. Senate investigators.
When: The documents span from October 2020 through July 2024, with key warnings suppressed as early as February 2021.
Where: The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration.
What happened: Internal government emails, obtained under FOIL and through Senate subpoenas, reveal that FDA officials knew their vaccine safety algorithm was mathematically incapable of detecting harms from mRNA vaccines—including myocarditis, pericarditis, Bell's palsy and tinnitus—yet continued to cite the absence of alerts as proof of safety. When career FDA medical officer Dr. Ana Szarfman proposed fixes, she was told to "cease and desist." Meanwhile, the nation's largest medical examiner's office privately discussed heart abnormalities in a 16-year-old who died days after his second Pfizer shot, while publicly maintaining vaccines were safe.
Medical examiners' private doubts
On June 26, 2021, Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner Dr. James Gill emailed a national forensic pathology discussion group asking whether colleagues had examined adolescents who developed heart problems after their second COVID-19 vaccination. "We are currently investigating the death of a 16 year old boy who was found dead in bed four days after receiving his second dose," Gill wrote. "His heart has striking ischemic changes."
Weeks earlier, on June 4, 2021, New York City Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson consulted Harvard-affiliated pathologists about a case of focal lymphocytic myocarditis occurring two months after vaccination. She wrote she "doubt there is an association" but asked if any pathology had been described.
The emails reveal a pattern: when deaths occurred shortly after vaccination, medical examiners sought to reassure one another rather than investigate potential links.
The broken algorithm
The BMJ investigation revealed that the FDA's "empirical Bayesian" data mining algorithm failed to signal potential relationships between mRNA vaccination and adverse events because of a mathematical flaw. During the first year of rollout, more than 90% of VAERS reports involved COVID-19 vaccines. When both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines elevated risks equally, the observed and expected frequencies became similar, producing no automated alerts.
Dr. Ana Szarfman, an FDA medical officer with decades of drug safety experience, warned top officials in early 2021 about this "masking" problem. She proposed an updated algorithm developed with statistician William DuMouchel that successfully flagged signals.
The suppression timeline:
- December 23, 2020: Szarfman first suggests improvements
- February 2021: She emails FDA vaccine chief Peter Marks directly
- March 2021: Szarfman presents heatmaps showing FDA algorithm misses signals while PRR method detects them
- May 7, 2021: FDA orders Szarfman to "hold off" on analyzing COVID vaccine data
- September 2021: Marks writes that Szarfman "has been asked to cease and desist"
Officials knew but continued assurances
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters in May 2021 that the agency had "not seen a signal" for myocarditis despite intentionally looking. Yet internal emails show CDC officials were informed of the algorithm's limitations during rollout.
On May 13, 2021, CDC Deputy Director Tom Shimabukuro emailed colleagues, "I'm perplexed that myocarditis isn't alerting for either of the mRNA vaccines," just one day before publicly calling myocarditis an "extremely rare side effect."
When the CDC finally performed PRR analyses in 2022, the results showed hundreds of adverse events meeting signal criteria—including myocarditis, pericarditis, Bell's palsy and tinnitus—in all 13 consecutive weekly reports. The FDA's Bayesian algorithm triggered none.
Clashing over "misinformation"
By December 2021, disagreements had erupted within the National Association of Medical Examiners email list. When a participant circulated claims about possible cardiac incidents among athletes, New York City medical examiner Dr. Jay Stahl-Herz objected: "Please stop sharing misinformation from a non-medical source."
Dr. William Oliver countered that physicians should "examine evidence rather than attack people presenting disputed claims." He added, "It will be a couple of years before it's appropriate to be dogmatic about any of these numbers."
Dr. Venus Azar challenged the dismissal: "You cannot know what is misinformation until you have looked at the original reports."
A pattern of suppression
The FDA's pharmacovigilance chief acknowledged in an October 2023 email that the agency "was aware of this limitation before and during the pandemic." Yet no public warning was issued.
Statistician William DuMouchel, who developed the Bayesian algorithm, expressed regret that officials rejected Szarfman's fixes. "If they had paid attention to Ana, they would have done better," he told The BMJ.
The investigations raise fundamental questions about whether public health agencies prioritized "vaccine confidence" over accurate safety surveillance. Attorney Sujata Gibson, who reviewed the medical examiner emails, said the documents reveal a storyline medical professionals tried to hide. She noted: "The city had the warnings. Deaths within a day of vaccination. A teenager found dead days after his second dose. Evidence that didn't fit the narrative was swept under the rug."
The legacy of suppressed warnings
The convergence of these investigations reveals a systematic failure: officials knew their primary safety surveillance tool was broken, silenced a doctor who offered fixes, and continued public assurances while medical examiners privately puzzled over deaths. The true clinical trial, as one critic noted, happened in real time on the American public—without honest communication from the agencies established to protect them. Whether these revelations prompt meaningful reform or become yet another chapter in eroded institutional trust remains an open question.
Sources for this article include: ChildrensHealthDefense.org BMJgroup.com
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