Francis Collins Admits "Really Rare Side Effects" For mRNA Shots: Myocarditis, Pericarditis

Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes Of Health (NIH), concedes that his early messaging on the safety of coronavirus inoculations could have conceded the possibility of "really rare side effects that could, in fact, be significant" once the test population size grew from 30,000 subjects to millions of people. This clip comes from a February 2022 Biologos panel discussion titled "Faith and Science In an Age of Tribalism."

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DEBORAH HAARSMA: So we were asking earlier, what do you wish could have been different in the last two years? And some things that I've been reading are about the public communication of conveying the uncertainty better in some way, and we're all a little gunshy of that because people just jump on us. "Oh, you changed your mind. That makes it look like you're weak, you're waffling, and scientists must not know anything, because they keep changing their minds."

And we're like, "Okay, come on guys. We're trying in the midst of all of this to give the best knowledge possible." And maybe it would help if we had, if all of those presentations had been couched with "and we have an X percent uncertainty. We're not sure. Things might change later." Maybe they were, and that just never got out there. I don't know. Francis, do you have something to add to all that?

FRANCIS COLLINS: Yeah, no, I think you've said it well. Again, I think humility is appropriate also in talking about the vaccines. Yes, we were quite confident that the results of the phase three trials were very clear, but, of course, we found out later that there were rare events.

In the case of the mRNA vaccines, of pericarditis, myocarditis. In the case of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, rare events of a clotting disorder. That was too rare to have popped up in a 30,000-person trial, so there was no reason to know about them then, but they ultimately emerged once we got millions and millions of people getting injected.

So yeah, even there, as we said the vaccines are safe and effective, it would have been appropriate to say "based upon a study, rigorously done, of 30,000 people. That doesn't rule out the possibility there might be really rare side effects that could, in fact, be significant. And I'm not sure that necessarily we conveyed that as well as we might have.

Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awJd2WUDzKY