Latest news with #RonJohnson
IOL News
9 hours ago
- Health
- IOL News
New US report reveals myocarditis risks linked to Covid vaccines for South Africans
A damning new report by US Senator Ron Johnson reveals that American authorities were alerted to a potential link between the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and conditions like myocarditis and pericarditis as early as February 2021, yet delayed warning the public for months. Image: Pexels As the world scrambled to roll out Covid-19 vaccines in 2021, millions of South Africans received mRNA jabs with confidence — unaware that top US health officials were sitting on growing concerns about serious heart-related side effects. A damning new report by US Senator Ron Johnson reveals that American authorities were alerted to a potential link between the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and conditions like myocarditis and pericarditis as early as February 2021, yet delayed warning the public for months. Implications for South Africa Now, as South Africans report similar complications, questions are being raised about whether local authorities were also kept in the dark — and what that has meant for informed consent. As many South Africans continue to report post-vaccine complications, the findings have reignited concerns around the adequacy of information provided to the public during the country's rollout. For those who experienced symptoms like heart inflammation, the silence from health authorities now feels like a betrayal. According to the 54-page interim report, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were aware of 'large reports of myocarditis' among young vaccine recipients, but only moved to update the vaccine safety labels in late June 2021. This means millions of people across the globe — including in South Africa — received mRNA shots without being informed of these potential risks. 'Even though CDC and FDA officials were well aware of the risk of myocarditis following Covid-19 vaccination, the US administration opted to withhold issuing a formal warning to the public for months about the safety concerns,' the report states. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading What is Myocarditis? Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, inflammation of the sac around the heart, can cause chest pain, irregular heart rhythms, and in rare cases, long-term cardiac damage. Myopericarditis, a combination of both, has also been reported. While these side effects are rare, they appear more frequently in young males and often emerge shortly after the second dose of the vaccine. South Africa relied heavily on Pfizer's mRNA vaccine during its national rollout. The US report raises concerns about whether international partners like South Africa received the necessary data to make timely and transparent decisions about public health messaging. If US authorities withheld warnings, were local health departments in a position to issue appropriate guidance — or were they operating under incomplete information? One pivotal moment came on 28 February 2021, when an Israeli health official contacted the CDC and FDA to flag 40 cases of post-vaccination myocarditis in young people. Despite the warning and Israel's significantly higher vaccination rate at the time, the US chose not to act publicly for several more months. During this silence, frontline doctors who attempted to raise red flags about the potential risks were reportedly censored or discredited. 'Around the time of internal CDC deliberations over myocarditis,' Senator Johnson writes, 'his office received a growing number of letters from doctors and other healthcare professionals who experienced suppression and censoring of this information they were experiencing.' Eventually, on June 25, 2021, the FDA added warnings to the Pfizer and Moderna labels about the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis. But by then, millions of people — including many South Africans — had already been vaccinated without that knowledge. The report's release comes just a day after the FDA announced tighter requirements for booster shot administration, adding further fuel to the debate about transparency, trust, and accountability in the global vaccine effort. IOL Lifestyle Get your news on the go, click here to join the IOL News WhatsApp channel.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The baffling B.S. of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson
Sen. Ron Johnson at the Newsroom Pub on Wednesday, May 28, 2025 | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner You have to hand it to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. As Republicans across the country run in fear from their constituents, refusing to hold town halls lest they be asked to answer for brutal federal budget cuts and threats to health care, nutrition assistance and Social Security, Johnson showed up at a Milwaukee Press Club event Wednesday and appeared cheerfully unperturbed as he took questions from journalists and a skeptical crowd. Not that his answers made sense. People sitting in front of the podium at the Newsroom Pub luncheon crossed their arms and furrowed their brows as Johnson explained his alternative views on everything from global warming to COVID-19 to the benefits of bringing the federal budget more in line with the spending levels of 1930 — i.e. the beginning of the Great Depression, before FDR instituted New Deal programs Johnson described as 'outside [the president's] constitutionally enumerated powers.' A handful of protesters chanted in the rain outside the Newsroom Pub, but overall, the event was cordial and reactions muted. In part, this was attributable to Johnson's Teflon cockiness and the barrage of misinformation he happily unleashed, which had a numbing effect on his audience. Johnson fancies himself a 'numbers guy.' In that way he's a little like former House Speaker Paul Ryan, his fellow Wisconsin Republican who was once considered the boy genius of the GOP. Ryan made it safe to talk about privatizing Medicare by touring the country with a PowerPoint presentation full of charts and graphs, selling optimistic projections of the benefits of trickle-down economics, corporate tax cuts and the magic of the private market. But Ryan couldn't stomach Trump and he's been exiled from the party. Johnson is the MAGA version. While he doesn't dazzle anyone with his brilliance, he does a good job of baffling his opponents with a barrage of B.S. that leaves even seasoned journalists scrambling to figure out what question to ask. Where do you begin? Back in 2021, YouTube removed a video of Johnson's Milwaukee Press Club appearance because he violated the platform's community standards by spreading dangerous lies about COVID, the alleged harm caused by vaccines and the supposed benefits of dubious remedies. But this week he was back, proudly endorsing DHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s decision to eliminate federal COVID vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children. While he hopes Kennedy goes further in rolling back vaccinations, he said, 'at least we're not going to subject our children to them anymore.' A woman in the audience who identified herself as a local business owner seeking 'common ground' thanked Johnson for saying 'we don't want to mortgage our children's future,' but expressed her concern that besides the deficit spending Johnson rails against, there's also the risk that we're mortgaging the future by destroying the planet. Johnson heartily agreed that everyone wants a 'pristine environment.' 'I mean, I love the outdoors,' he declared. But then he added, 'We shouldn't spend a dime on climate change. We'll adapt. We're very adaptable.' He claimed that 'something like 1,800 different scientists and business leaders' have signed a statement saying there is no climate crisis. (The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that climate change is real and caused by people and the statement he referred to has been debunked.) 'So if it's climate change you're talking about, we're just at cross-purposes,' he added. 'I completely disagree.' Most of Johnson's talk consisted of a fusillade of hard-to-follow budget numbers and nostrums like 'the more the government spends the less free we are.' Charles Benson of TMJ4 News tried to get the senator to focus on what it would take to get him to go along with Trump's 'big, beautiful' budget bill. 'So, a lot of numbers out there,' Benson said. 'Can you give me a bottom line? Do you want 2 trillion? 3 trillion?' 'Your reaction is the exact same reaction I get from the White House and from my colleagues,' Johnson chided, 'too many numbers. It's a budget process. We're talking about numbers. We're talking about mortgaging our kids' future.' Like his alternative beliefs about vaccination and climate science, Johnson's budget math is extremely fuzzy. He asserted, repeatedly, that Medicaid is rife with 'waste, fraud and abuse.' But the Georgetown University School of Public Policy has published a policy analysis dismantling claims that there is rampant waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid that concluded, 'This premise is false, and the thinking is dangerously wrong.' More broadly, Johnson claims that balancing the budget and reducing the federal deficit is his No. 1 concern. But he's committed to maintaining historic tax cuts for the super rich. The only way to reduce deficits, in his view, is to enact even deeper cuts than House Republicans passed, increasing hunger, undermining education and rolling back health care — because he's totally unwilling to increase revenue with even modest tax increases on corporations and the very wealthy. Those cuts, not a deficit that could be resolved by making the rich pay their share of taxes, are the real threat to our children's future. 'I'm just a guy from Oshkosh who's trying to save America,' Johnson said at the Press Club event. He recapped, in heroic terms, his lone stand against the 2017 tax cut for America's top earners, which he blocked until he was able to work in a special loophole that benefitted him personally. He told the panel of Wisconsin journalists he will also block Trump's 'big, beautiful' budget bill unless he sees deeper cuts, which he insisted would be easy to make. The 40 states that have taken the federal Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (which Johnson still calls 'Obamacare') are 'stealing money from federal taxpayers,' he declared. Slashing Medicaid will be easy, he suggested, since 'nobody would be harmed other than the grifters who are sucking down the waste, fraud and abuse.' Grifters? Wisconsin has 1.3 million Medicaid recipients. One in three children are on BadgerCare, as Medicaid is called here, along with 45% of adults with disabilities and 55% of seniors living in nursing homes. Our state program faces a $16.8 billion cut over 10 years under the House plan. During the Q&A session, I asked Johnson about this — not just the numbers, but the human cost. I brought up Shaniya Cooper, a college student from Milwaukee and a BadgerCare recipient living with lupus, who spoke at a press conference in the Capitol this week about how scary it was to realize she could lose her Medicaid coverage under congressional Republicans' budget plan. 'To me, this is life or death,' she said. She simply cannot afford to pay for her medicine out of pocket. When she first learned about proposed Medicaid cuts, 'I cried,' she said. 'I felt fear and dread.' What does Johnson have to say to Cooper and other BadgerCare recipients who are terrified of losing their coverage? 'I'll go back to my basic point,' Johnson replied. He quoted Elon Musk, whom he said he greatly admires for his DOGE work slashing federal agencies. 'If we don't fix this, we won't have money for any of this [government in general],' he said Musk told him. 'Nobody wants the truly vulnerable to lose those benefits of Medicaid,' Johnson added. 'But again, Obamacare expanded the waste, fraud and abuse of Medicaid, you know, expanding the people on it when, you know, when a lot of these people ought to be really getting a job.' Some of Johnson's Republican colleagues are worried about withdrawing health care coverage from millions of their constituents. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri called it immoral and 'political suicide.' He said he won't vote for the Medicaid cuts that passed the House because they will put rural hospitals out of business, and because too many hard-working, low-income people rely on the program for health coverage and simply cannot afford to buy insurance on the private market. But Johnson remains untroubled. He's pushing for bigger and more damaging cuts. And when asked what he can tell his constituents who are afraid they're about to lose life-saving health care, his answer is simple and unapologetic: Get a job. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Sen Ron Johnson suggests he may not run for re-election in 2028
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin indicated that he does not want to run for a fourth Senate term, but he isn't ruling it out. Johnson, who is serving his third six-year Senate term, said during remarks at a Wednesday event hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club and that he learned from his run for a second term that "you can't say … never." In a 2022 Wall Street Journal piece, Johnson explained his about-face on seeking another term. Us Officials Delayed Warning Public About Heart Inflammation Risk From Covid Shot: Report "During the 2016 campaign, I said it would be my last campaign and final term. That was my strong preference and my wife's. We both looked forward to a normal private life," he said. "I believe America is in peril. Much as I'd like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don't feel I should." The senator, who has been vocal in objecting to the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that most in the House GOP voted to pass last week, said during his remarks on Wednesday that he would like to place America on a "sustainable course" and return home. Read On The Fox News App Elon Musk Criticism Of Trump Tax Bill Frustrates Some Republicans: 'No Place In Congress' "I don't covet the position," he said. But while he's not slamming the door on the possibility of running for Senate again, he flatly ruled out the prospect of a presidential bid. Succeeding Trump: 6 Republican Potential Presidential Hopefuls To Keep Your Eyes On In 2028 "No, God, what an awful job," he said when asked whether he'd ever run for the presidency. He said he wouldn't want to make the decisions that a commander in chief must article source: Sen Ron Johnson suggests he may not run for re-election in 2028
Fox News
2 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
Ron Johnson
Ron Johnson is a United States senator from Wisconsin who was first elected to the role in 2010 after defeating the Democrat incumbent Russ Feingold. Now, Johnson is entering his third term as a senator after beating Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in the 2022 election. Johnson went to college at the University of Minnesota and skipped his senior year of high school after gaining early acceptance to the school. He studied business and accounting and graduated with a BSB-Accounting degree. After college, he began working as an accountant at Jostens and then took his education one step further by enrolling in an MBA program. Johnson became a business owner when he and his wife Jane started a business with her brother called PACUR, a company that produces plastic sheets for packaging and printing. In 2010, Johnson was elected into the Senate after he defeated Feingold. The two battled it out again in 2016, where Johnson came out victorious for a second time. Most recently, Johnson was up against Lieutenant Governor Barnes for the Senate seat. Johnson won the election again for his third term in the role. Since joining the Senate, the Republican Senator served as the Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee from 2015 through 2021 and is a ranking member for the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Other committees Johnson serves on are Budget, Foreign Relations and Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Fox News
2 days ago
- General
- Fox News
Sen Ron Johnson suggests he may not run for re-election in 2028
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin indicated that he does not want to run for a fourth Senate term, but he isn't ruling it out. Johnson, who is serving his third six-year Senate term, said during remarks at a Wednesday event hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club and that he learned from his run for a second term that "you can't say … never." In a 2022 Wall Street Journal piece, Johnson explained his about-face on seeking another term. "During the 2016 campaign, I said it would be my last campaign and final term. That was my strong preference and my wife's. We both looked forward to a normal private life," he said. "I believe America is in peril. Much as I'd like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don't feel I should." The senator, who has been vocal in objecting to the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that most in the House GOP voted to pass last week, said during his remarks on Wednesday that he would like to place America on a "sustainable course" and return home. "I don't covet the position," he said. But while he's not slamming the door on the possibility of running for Senate again, he flatly ruled out the prospect of a presidential bid. "No, God, what an awful job," he said when asked whether he'd ever run for the presidency. He said he wouldn't want to make the decisions that a commander in chief must make.
