COVID mRNA Shots Getting Official Review
Jeffrey A. Tucker
8/22/2025|Updated: 8/22/2025
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has kicked off a deep review of the COVID shots with a working group led by Dr. Retsef Levi of MIT and including Dr. Robert Malone. The group has already prepared a long list of profound questions that cover most of the doubts concerning shots that have negatively impacted public confidence on the vaccine industry in general, including compliance with the childhood schedule.
From the beginning of the COVID vaccine rollout, there were persistent questions about the new technology being used by the most widely distributed products. They used a mRNA delivered through lipid nanoparticles to create the spike protein of the virus to trigger an immune response. Because of the emergency conditions, the shot approvals bypassed the usual standards.
The questions concerning effectiveness were answered early on when “breakthrough infections” were common and increasing, clearly indicating that the shot would not stop the spread. Its effectiveness was short-lived and reduced further upon viral mutation. Public doubts were overridden by authorities with mandates for millions. The boosters kept rolling out but the product could never get ahead of the mutations.
All of this contradicted the exaggerated promises made by the president and all public-health officials at the time, who repeatedly said that getting the shot would protect you from getting the virus. Three former presidents were enlisted to assure the public. What they said was clearly untrue. Eventually, data began to register even negative efficacy: you were more likely to get sick with this shot than without.
A beginner-level education in immunological literature could have easily predicted this result. The stable viruses are amenable against which to vaccinate. The mutating viruses that also occur in animals are not. This is why there is no vaccine against the common cold, one species of which is a coronavirus.
Further, attempting to vaccinate out of pandemic is fraught with danger. You can energize mutations. You can also rewire the immune system in dangerous ways that makes people more sick than ever.
All of this was knowable even from the outset. What was unknown was the issue of safety. The signals began with soaring reports of injury and anecdotes about sudden death. Mainstream social media began blocking and censoring all discussion of the topic, which only fueled doubts and suspicions. As the studies rolled in documenting higher rates of death after the rollout than before, it became impossible to keep deep research under wraps.
With the credibility of all public health on the line following the election of Trump in 2024, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy reconstituted the Advisory Committee entirely, adding experts with no conflicts of interest related to pharmaceutical companies. Their opening meeting in June was the first in memory to raise questions from the reports dished out to them by the CDC committee serving them. In particular, Dr. Levi flagged some safety signals in an RSV shot for babies that was expected to sail through. He voted no.
More about the RSV issue in a bit but let’s first look at the list issued by the new COVID working group. These are the issues they will examine.- Review and summarize existing data and published and unpublished research and clinical knowledge related to the safety, effectiveness, and immunogenicity of COVID-19 immunizations authorized or approved in the United States.
- Summarize literature reviews of the epidemiology of COVID-19 disease and SARS-CoV-2 virus.
- Assess the benefit-risk balance for administration of COVID-19 immunization products at the same time as other immunizations.
- Identify areas where additional data and research are needed to inform COVID-19 immunization recommendations.
- Develop COVID-19 immunization recommendations.
- Review and summarize the existing clinical and scientific information available; and gaps in the existing knowledge, including from other federal agencies like the FDA, where appropriate relating to bio distribution, pharmacokinetics and persistence of the spike protein, mRNA, and lipid nanoparticles to inform immunization recommendations.
- Review and summarize the existing clinical and scientific information (including from federal agencies like the FDA, where appropriate); gaps in the existing knowledge regarding potential impurities (e.g., DNA contamination and endotoxins) in existing immunization products and their health impacts to inform immunization recommendations.
- Review and summarize the existing scientific knowledge, and gaps, regarding the cumulative short- and long-term impact of repeated boosting immunization including non-specific effects (e.g., IgG4 class switching, immune imprinting, viral evolution under leaky immunizations) to help inform immunization recommendations.
- Examine the impact of COVID-19 immunization on COVID-19 and all cause deaths, hospitalizations, and disability to inform immunization recommendations.
- Analyze existing data and scientific knowledge regarding cardiovascular, thrombotic, neurological, immunological and other serious adverse events potentially caused by COVID-19 immunization.
- Review and summarize available data, information, and gaps regarding long-term COVID effects from scientific literature and clinical experience associated with COVID-19 immunization products and COVID-19 infection to inform policy recommendations.
- Map existing COVID-19 immunization policies in countries around the world and how they compared to the United States.
- Analyze existing data and scientific knowledge related to the safety of COVID-19 immunization during pregnancy.
In an interview with science journalist Maryanne Demasi, Levi explained further:
“We will leave no stone unturned and look at all possible data from the FDA to the CDC, from the published and unpublished literature, and from the experience of clinicians who care for patients as well as from patients themselves. We need to be fully transparent about what we know, and what we don’t, and unfortunately that was not always practiced consistently in the past. My intention is to be part of changing that.”
The list of studies to be examined extends to the thousands now, as Kennedy himself pointed out when cancelling 22 contracts for mRNA research. NIH head Jay Bhattacharya further added that he sees no real future with mRNA technology.
With all that, there are remaining questions. Why did authorities promote and mandate these shots with such a poor record on efficacy and safety? How did it happen that the usual review standards were so drastically trampled? What if anything will be done to compensate the victims?
These are gigantic questions, given the multitude of ways that media and government pushed the shots without sufficient information on their impact on individual lives. Cities were segregated by vaccine status. Companies were ruined. Many people lost their jobs for refusing to comply. It was an upheaval without precedent.
If it turns out that the entire effort rested on faulty testing, there is a major problem. Generations of people will likely never believe again because the commanding heights of society will have been discredited. Therefore, much is at stake.
Already, the efforts to more closely examine the science are yielding genuine shocks. Further investigations into the disputed RSV shot have shown that the trials gamed the results. They split the test subjects in groups that buried safety signals. They cut off the trial period to assure the result they got. The manufacturer even stuck evidence of death in footnotes and defied study design to minimize reporting.
That was too much for Robert Malone, who posted that he would reverse his vote if he could do it over.
“ACIP members were presented with these data and all other data and presentations the day before the meeting, and had little chance to review let alone investigate all of the information provided,” he wrote.
“The presumption was that the information had been thoroughly vetted by the CDC and the outgoing ACIP RSV subcommittee (one member of which was present as a member of the reconstituted new ACIP) prior to the presentations. We had no reason or opportunity to question. Still, a minority subset of members were uncomfortable with the data trends. I voted in favor of the resolution based on the information and logic presented. That trust in the data presented now appears to have been ill-advised. Going forward, speaking for myself, based on these findings, I will no longer be able to trust that what is presented in CDC summaries to the ACIP is transparent, accurate, and unbiased.”
The big picture: a large suite of pharmaceutical products that have heretofore been unquestioned is facing new levels of scrutiny based on the discovery of data manipulation, shabby study design, and a range of conflicts of interest. This has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the facts of the case. What we will discover is likely going to further alarm the public against what has been done in the name of public health that is, in fact, anything but. |
