In March 2026, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released nearly 2,000 pages of internal records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), FDA, and CDC.
The documents paint a troubling picture: as early as October 2022, federal health officials identified a statistically significant signal linking Pfizer’s bivalent COVID-19 booster to an increased risk of ischemic stroke in adults aged 65 and older.
Yet despite seven separate analyses between November 2022 and March 2023 flagging the same concern, no formal public warning was issued, and booster recommendations for seniors remained unchanged.
Biden FDA Knew About COVID Vaccine Stroke Risk And Kept Americans In The Dark https://t.co/hp7AG6wCcY
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 13, 2026
The Internal Red Flags
The records show that CDC data captured 226 stroke cases reported between August 2022 and February 2023, with additional cases continuing into 2023 and 2024. Officials were concerned enough to launch an internal investigation they called “The Stroke Project” and even hired a private contractor, Lukos LLC, in February 2023 to dig deeper.
Internal communications reveal a communications plan that included a “Tough Questions and Answers” section prepared for President Biden and the White House. In draft versions, the stroke signal was described as “moderately elevated.” During final edits, that language was softened to “slightly elevated.” The change went unattributed.
Senator Johnson summed it up bluntly in his letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
“From the initial detection of the safety signal in late 2022 … health officials continued to say the vaccine was safe while simultaneously searching for evidence to support that assertion.”
Publicly, the agencies maintained that the bivalent boosters were safe and effective. A quiet preliminary notice appeared in January 2023, but no Health Alert Network (HAN) message was ever sent to doctors or the public, and no changes were made to vaccination guidance for the elderly — the very group showing the signal.
A Tale of Two Standards
The handling stands in sharp contrast to the Biden administration’s swift response in April 2021. After just six reported cases of a rare blood-clotting condition (thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS) linked to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — out of nearly 7 million doses — the FDA and CDC immediately paused its use.
Here, with hundreds of stroke cases in a far larger and more vulnerable population, no pause, no prominent warning, and no shift in recommendations occurred.
Important Context and Later Findings
Later CDC and FDA assessments, along with independent studies, examined the signal more closely. Many concluded that once confounding factors — particularly the simultaneous administration of flu shots — were accounted for, no clear causal link to the bivalent booster remained. The agencies have maintained that the overall safety profile of the COVID vaccines still supports their use in recommended populations.
Even so, the newly released records raise legitimate questions about transparency. Why downplay internal language? Why withhold a stronger public alert while the “Stroke Project” was still underway? And why treat this signal differently from the much rarer J&J clotting issue?
Why This Matters
Public trust in the FDA and CDC has already eroded sharply. According to Kaiser Family Foundation polling, fewer than half of Americans now believe these agencies operate free of political or special-interest influence. Revelations like this — showing internal awareness of a safety signal followed by softened language and minimal public disclosure — only deepen that skepticism.For millions of seniors who received the bivalent booster in late 2022 and early 2023, the documents may feel like a betrayal of the “safe and effective” messaging they heard at the time.
Moving Forward
Senator Johnson’s release of these records is part of ongoing congressional oversight into how vaccine safety signals were managed during the Biden administration. Whether this leads to meaningful reforms in how the FDA and CDC communicate risks to the public remains to be seen.
In an era when trust in institutions is already fragile, transparency isn’t optional — it’s essential. Americans deserve to know what their health agencies knew, when they knew it, and why certain risks were elevated internally but downplayed externally.
The full 2,000 pages are now public. The question is whether anyone in a position to act will demand real accountability — or whether this becomes just another footnote in the long saga of pandemic-era decision-making.
Sources: Senator Ron Johnson’s March 2026 letter and the accompanying HHS records, as detailed in ZeroHedge reporting.
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