It’s essential as a consumer to understand data. Data (a plural word) are information collected in the observation of something and in the field of medicine could be variables such as blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. Arguably, the most important data are deaths. We know in general that 40% of deaths are due to heart disease, 40% to cancer, and 20% to other causes. At 578,092 deaths in 12 months, taken at face value, COVID-19 has been the “leading cause of death,” temporarily eclipsing heart disease and cancer. Let’s hope this does not hold true for the next year. So, death is a data point, and the cause of death is important but difficult to ascertain. 

When a patient dies, the attending physician of record or commonly the last doctor taking care of the patient may be asked to complete the death certificate. If no doctor is available, then the coroner will complete the certificate often with very little information on the patient. Doctors, in my view, don’t receive good training, nor are there uniform standards to follow. 

Commonly the first thing listed is a cardiopulmonary arrest. Well, in all deaths, in the end, the heart and lungs stop working, so many find this uninformative unless the cardiopulmonary arrest was unexpected such as in a massive heart attack or blood clot to the lungs. It’s usually the second, third, and next problems that give more light, such as pneumonia, dementia, hip fracture, etc.

You can see from this list that the death may not have been much of a surprise. Having considered this, COVID-19 deaths have been attacked by some as an over-reach by doctors filling out death certificates.  

It has been commonplace that autopsies be deferred in COVID-19 patients given the fear of spread, so we don’t have information about the final cause as determined by the post-mortem exam. Many have said, “Well, they were going to kick the bucket anyway.” I have found that callous in tough times as many frail seniors missed their final holidays, birthdays, and family milestones due to life being shortened by months or years due to COVID-19. Nevertheless, deaths are important, and we have seen our fill of deaths on the Johns Hopkins scoreboard. 

In The McCullough Report this week, I indicated that in addition to 578,092 COVID-19 deaths, we now have, as of April 2, 2021, 2342 deaths after 60M COVID-19 vaccination. At approximately 1600 deaths, the CDC announced on their websites with very little fanfare that CDC/FDA doctors had reviewed all the deaths, and none of them were caused by vaccination.  

I can tell you as someone who has worked on data adjudication and data safety monitoring teams that assessment of 1600 deaths with full details, including the hospital records, death certificates, laboratories, etc., is a giant task and involves at least two reviewers on each case and a process for agreement.  

We know the majority of patients die in the hospital; for each case, there is a mountain of data. I fear that the CDC and FDA doctors as “vaccine stakeholders” that are working for agencies who have a vested stake in the success of mass vaccination and who understand the issue of vaccine hesitancy would have the natural bias of trying to reassure Americans that the vaccines are safe.

With this bias and with the many months of work to reveal the massive amount of data in each case, I can tell you I am worried that the deaths were not carefully reviewed and ascertainment of cause of death was effectively scrubbed. 

This is a very dangerous time for our regulatory agencies. Keep in mind some of the deaths occur immediately in the vaccination center. The reasonable public consumer of information would conclude that lightning could not have struck in every case of death that occurred on the spot in the vaccination center. If none were related, then why do vaccine centers have resuscitation equipment on hand?  

If the vaccine triggered the fatal allergic reaction, stroke, or heart attack, then to be conservative and ascribe it to possibly or probably related to the vaccine is the only thing to do. However, these unnamed doctors did not indicate this, not in a single case. This could be the most flagrant example of the CDC and FDA propagating misinformation to the public. 

Our worries have been heightened by the CDC FDA “pause” on the JNJ vaccine and blood clots in women, including one fatality. Is this the first vaccine death according to the CDC and FDA? Listen to The McCullough Report this week for a lot more color and analysis on this issue since it may be your only window to data and information from CDC databases. I was careful to reference and date it all since these will become important for future historians. I will leave you with some final data:

1976 Swine flu mass vaccination program:  55 M vaccinated 500 cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (paralysis) and 25 deaths, program stopped due to safety concerns.

Annual influenza vaccination program US:  195 M vaccinated, 20-30 deaths reported to the CDC.

COVID-19 mass vaccination program:  60 M vaccinated 2342 deaths; one vaccine JNJ halted at 7 M vaccinated for 8 cases of blood clots 1 fatal. The majority of deaths must have occurred with Pfizer and Moderna vaccines still being administered daily in the US as of April 14, 2021.