NIH leader afraid of COVID jabs, FDA adviser says Fauci admitted teens don't need vaccine

As a new guard takes the reins of public health agencies in the second Trump administration, mostly composed of doctors who questioned the science behind COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates, the old guard's alleged secrets from their pandemic management keep dribbling out.

A relatively young National Institutes of Health branch director admitted on undercover video that he hadn't received "the latest COVID shots and I'm not going to" because it would "increase my risk for the known myocarditis," cited "mixed evidence" if COVID vaccination "does anything" and expressed concern that vaccines were rushed to full approval in 2021 to justify boosters.

Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged "at a meeting maybe a year ago" that the feds recommended one-size-fits-all COVID vaccination because they feared high-risk groups wouldn't get vaccinated with a "nuanced message," according to a pediatrician who says he spoke with Fauci there.

Taxpayers have shelled out at least $15 million for Fauci's security as a private citizen since he stepped down from the federal government nearly two years ago, according to Freedom of Information Act documentation obtained by spending watchdog Open the Books.

The memorandum of understanding between the Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Marshals Service, which covered Jan. 4, 2023, through Sept. 20, 2024, and had an extension option, shows Fauci received his own chauffeur and "fully staffed" detail, OTB said.

"We could find no other cases of a former federal employee receiving this level of protection," the watchdog said, noting the service asked Congress for another $28 million to protect federal judges and courthouses. HHS didn't answer Just the News on whether the MOU was extended.

President-elect Donald Trump is charting a different but not exactly opposite path for his agency nominations than his pandemic team's in 2020, when advisers including Fauci generally promoted lockdowns, masking and other interventions with little empirical basis, most memorably the six-foot distancing rule that Fauci later admitted was made up.

While Trump nominated vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary and vocal critics of lockdowns and mandates – Stanford medical professor and Great Barrington Declaration co-author Jay Bhattacharya as NIH director and Johns Hopkins medical professor Marty Makary as Food and Drug Administration commissioner – his surgeon general nominee, Janette Nesheiwat, only disavowed the COVID catechism in late 2022.

Raja Cholan, who leads the National Library of Medicine's Health Data Standards Branch within NIH, made a series of admissions in hidden-camera footage by investigative journalist James O'Keefe's organization that echo earlier comments by officials and even a Pfizer executive.

While the clips aren't dated, Cholan and his surreptitious interviewer – whom he jokes is "honeypotting" him by asking sensitive questions on their date – allude to Trump's promise to include RFK Jr. in a second presidential administration, suggesting they were recorded after the independent withdrew from the race and endorsed Trump. 

"Anything that RFK would want to do probably … wouldn't happen" because officials would get fired or retire, leaving "a bunch of institutes and divisions that are understaffed," he said.

Cholan also refers to reports that agency employees are "misspelling words on purpose" to evade FOIA searches, something that only came to light this spring through a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic investigation.

The official said he's "close enough to 30"– the age cutoff he gives for post-vaccination heart conditions – that "I don’t want to have a heart attack" by taking any more jabs. 

"I think we're all going to learn" the effect of COVID vaccines on myocarditis rates "after it's too late," in 10 years when "a bunch of people will have gotten, like, all 10 boosters." 

He contrasted the "several rounds of approval" for the measles vaccine with the "accelerated" approval for COVID vaccines, whose mandates made Pfizer and Moderna "a bunch of money."

Cholan responded to O'Keefe posting the video by deleting his LinkedIn account, which still shows up in search results on Google, Brave and DuckDuckGo. NIH didn't respond to Just the News queries on Cholan's comments and whether it believes they are out of context.

Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital Philadelphia and member of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, disclosed his alleged year-ago conversation with Fauci deep into a wide-ranging interview with physician and podcast host Zubin Damania last week.

He also spilled the beans to Damania, in an interview last year, that Fauci and other top Biden administration public health officials convened Offit and other experts to advise them on whether natural immunity should qualify as an exemption to vaccine mandates.

Offit referred to that meeting in his new interview. 

"We all basically agreed" on an exemption but "the question was, bureaucratically," how would the government verify someone's prior infection. 

He marveled that the U.S. and Canada, alone in the world, still recommend yearly COVID vaccines for everyone six months and older, prompting Offit's recollection of pressing Fauci on why the U.S. doesn't target "high-risk groups" as do other countries and the World Health Organization. 

"I said, 'Tony, am I wrong?'" Offit recounted. "He said, 'No, you're right, we should target high-risk groups'" but that this approach would create a "garbled message" that may keep some high-risk people from getting vaccinated.

"If we think that, we should say it, because my personal thinking on this is then, if that's the reason we're vaccinating healthy 16-year-old boys, that's not a good reason," Offit said. "Just have it open – say it openly! … I think people are smart enough to hear it."

NIAID didn't respond to queries on Offit's recollection of Fauci's comments.