U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is expressing dismay over how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) responded to his questions about the agency’s handling of pilot health issues.
“How can the FAA maintain safe skies when it turns a blind eye toward pilots experiencing COVID-19 vaccine injuries?” Johnson said in an email sent exclusively to The Epoch Times on Feb. 21.
“Is it willful ignorance that the FAA is aware of only four active pilots experiencing adverse events connected to the COVID-19 vaccine? The American people are not getting the full transparency and honesty from federal agencies that they deserve.”
Johnson made those remarks in response to how Susan Northrup, the FAA’s federal air surgeon, answered eight questions surrounding pilot health.
Not the FAA’s Role
In his Jan. 27 letter to the FAA, Johnson provided specific information about five named pilots with suspected COVID-19 vaccine ill effects; one of the pilots died 17 days after being vaccinated.
Numerous other accounts of pilots with suspected vaccine injuries are included in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, as The Epoch Times reported previously.
Johnson wanted to know what steps the FAA has taken or planned to take to investigate whether the five named pilots and others had suffered adverse effects after COVID-19 shots.
Northrup wrote that her agency isn’t in charge of that.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the responsible agency for tracking and follow up of suspected vaccine adverse events,” she wrote.
Northrup noted that pilots experiencing any medical issues are required to “ground themselves,” seek medical help and report any “significant medical events.”
“FAA is responsible for determining whether that event will have an adverse safety effect,” Northrup wrote.
She also said the agency was “aware of only four potentially vaccine-related adverse events in active pilots.”
Among those four, “only one has provided medical documentation through the normal process,” Northrup wrote. She gave no further information on what that process involves.
Justification For Shots
Johnson noted that, on Dec. 12, 2020, the day after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized COVID-19 vaccines for “emergency use” among the general public, the FAA declared pilots were permitted to take the shots, too.
That action surprised many in aviation because pilots are forbidden from taking other emergency-use-authorized drugs.
To justify the drugs’ use in pilots, Northrup listed nine websites about the general safety of the various brands of vaccines. Aviation experts have questioned whether any studies were done on pilots specifically. There were no such studies immediately apparent among the list Northrup provided.
Asked whether the FAA evaluated whether any changes should be made to guidance on COVID-19 vaccines for pilots, Northrup responded that the agency has “continued to monitor the data and determined no change in policy was indicated.”
Heart Standard Change Pre-COVID
Finally, Northrup addressed concerns about the FAA’s decision to change the acceptable range for the “PR Interval,” an indicator of heart health, on pilots’ electrocardiogram tests.
The PR Interval measures how long it takes for a pulse to travel from one part of the heart to another. A longer PR Interval could be benign, but it also could be an indicator of heart damage; further tests have traditionally been warranted for readings above 200 milliseconds.
Johnson noted that the FAA cited “new scientific evidence” as a rationale for expanding the acceptable PR Interval to 300 ms in a medical examiners’ guide in late 2022.
That change stirred controversy earlier this year after a researcher from an advocacy group, US Freedom Flyers, discovered it.
Some questioned whether spike proteins from the COVID-19 vaccines or the virus itself might be damaging pilots’ hearts and if the change in standard might cause potential issues to go untested.
Even though the revised standard was never added to the FAA’s guide for medical examiners until 2022, Northrup says the FAA made the change in 2017, “after discussions with our cardiology panel, which included FAA doctors as well as external practicing cardiologists.”
Aviation medical examiners were “alerted” to the change in 2018 and 2019, Northrup said, with a link to a video.
The 2022 revision to the PR interval was the first change to that specific part of the guide since 2016, Northrup said.
The change made on Oct. 26, 2022, was made as a clarification “to match existing training and instructions,” Northrup wrote.
Although some people suspected that the 2022 change may have been designed to hide a growing number of pilots diagnosed with PR Intervals above 210 ms, data from Northrup showed that number actually went down, not up.
Last year, there were 1,712 such cases; in contrast, there were 2,889 cases in 2021 and 2,642 cases in 2020, Northrup wrote.
Asked how many pilots are certified to fly with PR Intervals at the elevated levels, Northrup replied, “We do not know who was currently flying.”
Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times. Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
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Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
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