Sen. Johnson: COVID vaccine reckoning is ‘long overdue’

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., called for a broad reckoning over the government and medical establishment’s response to COVID-19, arguing in an Aug. 18 Wall Street Journal op-ed that federal health officials withheld information about theoretical vaccine safety concerns from pregnant women. 

In the op-ed, titled “Medicine’s Covid Reckoning is Long Overdue,” Johnson responded to an Aug. 14 Journal editorial disputing claims that a 2021 study documented an 82% miscarriage rate among women who received COVID-19 vaccines early in pregnancy. The Journal argued that the 82% figure came from calculating the study’s data incorrectly and that later research found miscarriage rates closer to normal levels. 

Johnson argued that the debate over the figure misses the larger issue: federal health officials failed to disclose potential safety concerns to pregnant women, denying them the information needed to make fully informed decisions.

As Zeale News previously reported, text messages released by Johnson and Rand Paul, R-Ky., show that in 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci privately discussed a theoretical connection between post-vaccination fever and miscarriage before publicly saying regulators had seen “no red flags” involving vaccination during pregnancy. 

>> Bombshell texts reveal Fauci privately said COVID-19 vaccine could in theory pose miscarriage risk <<

“By arguing over one particular interpretation of what your editorial called a ‘sloppy’ study, fact checkers and other Anthony Fauci apologists are missing the main point: Dr. Fauci withheld information from pregnant women that they had the right to know,” Johnson wrote. 

Johnson wrote that the central question is not whether the miscarriage rate was 82% or some other figure, which he said “we probably will never know because of grossly inadequate and negligent, if not corrupt, safety surveillance.”

“The question should be why federal health officials consistently withheld information on safety signals, thereby depriving the public of fully informed consent,” Johnson wrote. 

He also criticized major news organizations for what he described as their role in the failures surrounding the COVID-19 response, accusing them of failing to scrutinize the government’s handling of vaccine safety concerns and “silencing dissenting voices” on the issue.

“Until we have a thorough Covid reckoning, trust in media, health agencies, doctors, hospitals, ‘experts’ and science will continue to plummet,” Johnson concluded. “And deservedly so.”