💥 When Politics Masquerades as Science: The FDA’s Memo on Child COVID-19 Vaccine Deaths
How to spot a con
🧩 The Setup
A new internal memo from the FDA’s vaccine division claims that “at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving the COVID-19 vaccination.”
That sentence alone flooded social media with “I told you so” posts from anti-vaccine pundits.
But the memo offers no autopsies, no case reports, no timelines, and no peer review.
If there’s evidence, show it.
If there isn’t, stop implying it.
⚕️ In Medicine, We Take Deaths Seriously — and We Prove Them
When a death follows any medical intervention, physicians investigate.
That means autopsy, clinical data, and expert review, not anecdotes or speculation.
The memo leans on VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — an open database where anyone can submit a claim.
VAERS is invaluable for spotting early signals, but cannot prove causation.
A VAERS report is a starting point, not a conclusion.
No medical intervention is risk-free, but evidence of harm must come from legitimate evidence and not rumours.
📊 Context Still Matters
From 2020 to 2022, COVID-19 ranked as the 7th or 8th leading cause of death in the United States.
Vaccination prevented tens of thousands of deaths, including roughly 1,000 children.
Even if one or two vaccine-related deaths were ever proven — and none have been — the benefit-to-risk ratio would remain overwhelmingly positive.
That’s not politics; that’s epidemiology.
👤 Who Is Vinay Prasad — and Why That Matters
The memo’s author, Dr. Vinay Prasad, now directs the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
He’s a board-certified hematologist-oncologist and epidemiologist, trained at top institutions, formerly on the faculty at UCSF. His academic credentials are not in question.
What is in question is objectivity.
Throughout the pandemic, Prasad became known as a sharp critic of public-health policy — arguing that vaccine mandates for young, low-risk groups were unnecessary, and that adding COVID vaccines to the childhood immunization schedule was, in his words, “a mistake.” (drvinayprasad.com)
He accused earlier FDA leaders of “rubber-stamping” approvals without sufficient randomized-trial data, and has continued to advocate stricter vaccine standards.
That record doesn’t disqualify him. Science needs skeptics.
But it does introduce another red flag: when skepticism hardens into identity, it risks filtering data through belief rather than the other way around.
Prasad is well trained, and no one doubts that.
But training isn’t the same as curiosity. True science requires humility to set aside bias, even when the data prove us wrong.
Real scientists love this moment when the evidence says: "You missed something."
That’s how we learn.
If the FDA’s new leadership treats doubt as data and critique as conclusion, it stops being science and becomes self-confirmation.
🚩 The Six Red Flags of a Con — and Why They Matter Here
From my Spotting the Con framework, these six warning signs show when persuasion drifts from science into manipulation.
Look at the pattern around this memo and see how many appear:
1 — Appeal to Special Knowledge“We inside the new FDA know what others won’t tell you.” It flatters followers with secret insight.
2 — Emotional Manipulation Invoking “dead children” without verified evidence to bypass critical thinking.
3 — Isolation from Expertise Dismissing peer review and established safety systems like CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink.
4 — Financial or Ideological Gain Feeding outrage ecosystems that monetize fear and reinforce anti-vaccine ideology.
5 — Us vs. Them Narrative Casting scientists and public-health agencies as villains hiding “the truth.”
6 — Rejection of Disconfirming Evidence Ignoring extensive real-world data showing vaccines prevent severe illness and death.
When several red flags appear together, you’re not seeing healthy debate — you’re watching persuasion dressed as science.
🧠 Data, Not Dogma
Science thrives on disagreement.
It collapses under dogma, whether that dogma comes from a pharmaceutical boardroom or a bureaucrat’s desk.
If Prasad’s team has autopsy-confirmed cases, release them.
If not, acknowledge uncertainty and correct the record.
Transparency builds trust.
Secrecy destroys it.
🩺 Why This Matters Beyond One Memo
Each time a public agency releases unverified claims, it chips away at public trust in medicine.
Parents who dutifully vaccinated their children now face fear sown not by fringe activists, but by officials inside the system.
We can welcome contrarians.
We can demand rigor.
But we cannot let ideology rewrite evidence from any side.
🔬 The Takeaway
Science isn’t afraid of being wrong; it’s afraid of pretending it’s right without proof.
We don’t fear dissenters.
We fear dogma that colors data.
And the cure for dogma is always the same: show the evidence.
🧾 Sources
STAT News (2025 Nov 29): FDA memo claims 10 child deaths linked to COVID vaccine
SF Chronicle: California immunization leader blasts FDA vaccine chief’s unsupported claim
🔒 Paid Subscribers: The Galileo Gambit — Why Evidence, Not Martyrdom, Defines Science
History’s true rebels — Galileo, Semmelweis, Karikó — were persecuted because they had data that threatened orthodoxy.
Today’s self-styled “truth tellers” often invoke their names while offering no evidence at all.
Being criticized doesn’t make you Galileo.
Producing proof does.
When skepticism serves evidence, it’s science.
When it serves ego or politics, it’s theater.