By Independent News Roundup
A new Majority Staff Interim Report from Sen. Ron Johnson’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was released today (April 29, 2026), titled Unmasked: How Biden Health Officials Purposely Turned a Blind Eye Toward COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Signals.

In early 2021 — just weeks after the COVID-19 vaccines rolled out under EUA — FDA senior medical officer Dr. Ana Szarfman (a key developer of the agency’s own data mining system) teamed up with Dr. William DuMouchel (the statistician who literally invented FDA’s “gold standard” EB data mining algorithm) to run an upgraded analysis on VAERS data.
Their new method (Regression-Adjusted Gamma Poisson Shrinker — RGPS) fixed a known flaw called “masking” — where signals for one COVID vaccine get drowned out by the sheer volume of reports from the others.
What they found was explosive:
Dr. Szarfman repeatedly shared these findings with senior CBER officials (the very people in charge of vaccine safety), including Dr. Peter Marks, in March, April, May, and July 2021.
Their response?
Later, FDA quietly locked down distribution of its own weekly data mining reports to CDC — right around the time FOIA requests and Sen. Johnson’s letters started coming in. One CDC official even admitted they may have asked FDA to stop sending them “because of the FOIAs.”
Even after Dr. Szarfman and DuMouchel published their findings in Drug Safety (2022) showing masking was eight times more likely with COVID vaccines, and Dr. Robert Califf replied “Thanks. These are good,” no changes were made to the methodology.
This is documented, internal FDA communication showing deliberate suppression of safety signals at the exact moment millions of Americans were being told the shots were “safe and effective.”
The cover-up continues to unravel. Accountability is urgently warranted.
Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation