Text messages show Fauci had concerns about COVID vaccine and miscarriage risk in 2021 — while telling public vaccines were safe

Newly released text messages are reigniting questions about what senior American public health officials knew — and chose not to say publicly — about COVID-19 vaccine risks during pregnancy.

In a January 25, 2021 text exchange with then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Dr. Anthony Fauci privately raised concerns that the fever and cytokine response triggered by the vaccine’s second dose “theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester” — even as agencies publicly gave pregnant women the all-clear, according to the New York Post.

The messages, released Monday by Republican Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, were drawn from more than 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails obtained from Fauci’s government-issued phone by the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Fauci simultaneously stressed that officials had to weigh theoretical vaccine risks against the risks of COVID-19 itself, noting that more than 10,000 pregnant women had already been vaccinated with no issues reported. No peer-reviewed national surveillance data published since has established a confirmed population-wide increase in miscarriage rates tied to COVID-19 vaccination.