Report: HHS Poised to Stop Recommending mRNA COVID Shots For Pregnant Women, Teenagers and Children

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to stop recommending that pregnant women, teenagers and children get Covid-19 injections, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The move, which is expected to be announced in the coming days, is sure to ease the concerns of many in the “MAHA” movement who have been waiting the administration to take action against the risky, adverse event-prone mRNA jabs.

According to sources familiar with the plan, HHS, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will remove the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) “recommendations for those groups around the same time it launches a new framework for approving vaccines.”

The CDC currently recommends that everyone six months and older, including pregnant women, receive Covid vaccines. It wasn’t clear if the department is planning to remove the recommendation for Covid shots entirely for those groups, or just suggest that patients talk with their doctors about risks and benefits.

Kennedy, who has long been a vaccine critic, filed a citizen’s petition with Dr. Meryl Nass of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), to the Food and Drug Administration on behalf of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) in May of 2021, urging the FDA to revoke their emergency-use authorizations, citing the “growing safety concerns.”

Alarming safety signals were in evidence very early into the rollout of the vaccines, as the pair noted in their petition.

“According to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data, there have been 192,954 reported adverse events following COVID vaccination, including 4,057 deaths between Dec. 14, 2020 and May 7, 2021,” Kennedy and Nass wrote at the time.

Moderna, and Pfizer and BioNTech, have Covid shots using messenger-RNA technology that have received emergency authorizations for use in children as young as six months, and full approvals for those 12 and older. Novavax’s shot, which uses an older protein technology, has authorization for children 12 and up.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said Thursday that he does not recommend the use messenger-RNA technology in children.
“Separate from my role as a regulator at the FDA, I am not encouraging or insisting young, healthy children to get a Covid shot unless there is new evidence that emerges that suggests there is a clear benefit,” he said.

Kennedy is reportedly considering making changes to the CDC’s vaccine recommendations.

Richard Hughes, a lawyer and vaccine advocate, told the WSJ he was “worried about immunocompromised people who prefer to have friends and family vaccinated.” He also said the move would “have a behavioral impact on whether people choose to get vaccinated.”

The WSJ characterized Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s regrettable effort to rush the COVID vaccines to market despite glaring safety concerns as “one of the signature health achievements of Trump’s first term.”

“It also means that fewer people might get the shots, which are already taken by relatively few children. And it could mean that insurers become less likely to cover the shots,” the Journal lamented.

Fewer people are getting Covid shots than in the early days of the pandemic. As of April, about 13% of children and 14% of pregnant women had received the most recent Covid shot, according to the CDC.
In addition to the CDC recommendation changes, the FDA is also planning to roll out a new framework for vaccine approvals next week, Makary told a conference room full of food and drug lawyers Thursday. He didn’t give details but suggested later to reporters that vaccine companies might be required to submit more data to the FDA. The agency asked that of Maryland-based Novavax, which is seeking full approval for its Covid vaccines. HHS has said it would require placebo testing for all new vaccines.

“We want to see vaccines that are available for high-risk individuals,” Makary told reporters. “And at the same time, we want some good science. We want some good clinical data.”

In further good news for COVID vaccine critics, Kennedy this week appointed British cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra as Chief Medical Adviser on his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative, the Daily Mail reported.

As chief medical advisor of MAHA – a grassroots lobbying group – Dr Malhotra is not formally employed by the federal government, but he will serve as a leading voice of the movement, working closely with grassroots groups to advance its policy agenda.

Dr Malhotra will also relocate from his home in the UK to Washington, D.C., to stay closely engaged with the HHS, FDA, and other key agencies.

Malhotra, a former advisor to the UK government, became a COVID vaccine critic after studying Pfizer and Moderna randomized controlled trial data, which showed that the risk of suffering serious adverse effects of mRNA vaccines  was significantly higher than the risk of being hospitalized with Covid-19.

Malhotra said in peer-reviewed paper in September 2022 that “There has been a rise in out of hospital cardiac arrests and heart attacks linked to Pfizer’s Covid-19 mRNA vaccine with plausible biological mechanisms of harm.” He added, “pharmacovigilance systems and real-world safety data, coupled with plausible mechanisms of harm, are deeply concerning, especially in relation to cardiovascular safety.”

Malhotra’s own father died of a cardiac arrest shortly after receiving an mRNA injection.

Malhotra’s paper, entitled “Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine,” was praised by a host of leading doctors and scientists around the world, including Jay Bhattacharya, then-Professor of Medicine at the University of Stanford, now the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“Malhotra makes a good case that there is considerable heterogeneity across age groups and other comorbid conditions in the expected benefits and expected side effect profiles of the vaccine,”  Bhattacharya commented at the time.

The doctor said on X Thursday that “the first person to call me and thank me for my courage after I called for a suspension of COVID mRNA vaccine in 2022 was RFK Jr.”

He finds that while there may be a case for older people to take the vaccine because the benefits may outweigh expected harm that may not be the case for younger people. Dr. Malhotra’s paper calls for a pause in the use of the vaccine in younger people, such as the one recently adopted by Danish public health authorities and the Florida department of public health in the United States. He calls for investigation of side effect profiles of mRNA vaccines and for a halt to any vaccine mandate programs involving Covid vaccines. These papers should be considered carefully by all public health authorities who seek to adopt principles of evidence-based medicine in their recommendations to the public regarding the Covid mRNA vaccines.

A recent study showed a 620 percent increase in myocarditis among young men since the COVID-19 shots were rolled out.

Malhotra told the Daily Mail he wants to see the use of mRNA therapeutics halted until a comprehensive review is conducted.

“It’s very clear to me that perhaps this is the most important issue that has galvanized MAHA and helped elect President Trump,” he said. “There is a pandemic of the vaccine injured. We can’t make America healthy again if we don’t address this.”

On X, the cardiologist wrote: “It’s what you’ve been waiting for. There is OVERWHELMING evidence to call for a moratorium on the mRNA covid jabs & help the vaccine injured. Let it rip.”