First child identified in the FDA’s vaccine-death investigation

The FDA has acknowledged at least ten paediatric deaths linked to Covid-19 vaccines — and 16-year-old Ernesto Ramirez Jr is among them.

Last week, a leaked FDA memo acknowledged that at least ten children died “after and because of” the Covid-19 vaccine in the United States.

None of those children had been identified — until now.

One of them is now understood to be Ernesto Ramirez Junior, a 16-year-old from Texas who collapsed and died five days after receiving the Pfizer Covid shot.

“Junior,” as he is known, is among the cases at the centre of the FDA’s internal investigation into paediatric deaths following Covid vaccination.

For his father, Ernest Ramirez, the past four years have been consumed by grief, tireless campaigning, and what he describes as a “living hell.”

Now, for the first time, he believes the FDA has acknowledged what he has always known — the vaccine took his child.

“That’s the poison that killed my son,” he told me.

A father fights for his son

Junior was healthy, athletic and inseparable from his dad. Ernest raised him as alone.

“We were always together, we were never apart,” he said. “Like I’ve always said, he was my best friend… We were buddies.”

Ernest Ramirez and his son Junior

Five days after the Pfizer shot, Junior went to the park with a neighbour to play basketball.

“They started running and he just collapsed,” Ernest said.

Paramedics rushed him to hospital but attempts to revive him failed. Ernest still remembers the bluntness of the staff.

“Yeah, you can go home now, your son’s dead,” is how he recalls the doctor’s tone.

He could not return to the empty house.

At first, he had no idea the vaccine could have been involved. It wasn’t until cardiologist Dr Peter McCullough reviewed the records that Ernest heard the words that changed everything.

McCullough told him Junior’s heart “was twice the normal size it should have been.” Junior had died from myocarditis — a vaccine injury now formally acknowledged by regulators.

Ernest Ramirez grieves at his son’s funeral.

Years of denial — and a cash offer

From the outset, Ernest says local doctors refused to acknowledge any link to Pfizer’s vaccine.

He recounts the hospital’s doctor first insisting Junior wasn’t vaccinated, then claiming no child had died that day, then calling Junior ‘overweight’ — until Ernest showed him a photo.

“He was well, he looks like a normal 16-year-old boy,” he remembers telling the doctor.

As a single parent without insurance, Ernest struggled to pay for the funeral. A friend told him FEMA was covering Covid-related funeral costs, so he applied.

“They asked me for medical records, the autopsy. I gave them everything they asked for,” he said.

But FEMA rejected the claim: “Your son didn’t die of Covid.”

Ernest replied, “That’s right, because he died from the vaccine.”

Months later, he says FEMA called back with a proposal.

“They asked me… if I would change my son’s death certificate so that it showed he died of Covid…then they would give me $10,000 for the funeral,” he said.

He refused immediately, even though he needed the money.

“I said no. I would not disrespect my son like that, and I will not falsify documents for financial gain.”

The calls continued.

“They harassed me for two years,” he said. FEMA kept raising the offer. “They raised it up to $35,000… and I kept telling them I would not do that. I won’t disrespect my son.”

Meanwhile, the agencies responsible for vaccine safety were silent.

“CDC, FDA, NIH — no one would respond,” he said

FDA’s broken VAERS system

A VAERS report had been filed on Junior’s behalf, but like so many others, it sat untouched. Ernest’s experience mirrors what other clinicians encountered during the vaccine rollout.

In a case reported by The BMJ, paediatric rheumatologist Dr Patrick Whelan submitted a detailed VAERS report on a seven-year-old boy who suffered a cardiac arrest and was resuscitated in the ICU.

Whelan repeatedly followed up with the FDA, informing officials that the child had subsequently died. Yet the VAERS record was never updated.

As Whelan told The BMJ, “You’d be left with the false impression that the child had had a serious adverse event, rather than seeing that he’d died.”

Cases like Whelan’s show how easily even the most serious paediatric outcomes disappeared into a system that was supposed to function as an early-warning signal — and why Ernest’s pleas, for years, went nowhere.

Tracy Høeg shines a light

Everything changed when FDA senior scientist Dr Tracy Beth Høeg began investigating child deaths linked to the Covid-19 vaccines.

“She asked for my son’s medical records, autopsy and I gave that all to her before we even met,” Ernest said.

She also asked for the Pfizer lot number.

“I memorised it,” he told me. “Because that’s the poison that killed my son.”

The lot was ER8731.

“I’ve been told that’s one of the worst lot numbers that was put out,” he said.

For the first time since Junior died, someone inside a federal agency was genuinely examining his case.

Inside the FDA meeting

Ernest travelled to Washington, D.C., to meet with the new leadership: FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Dr Høeg.

A friend who was also vaccine-injured accompanied him. What struck Ernest most was how much time the FDA officials were willing to give him.

“We sat there for about three hours talking when normally people only give you 30 minutes at the max,” he said.

Ernest said he and his friend were the ones who eventually ended the meeting to get food as it got late into the night — Makary and Høeg showed no sign of wanting to leave.

“We gave them paperwork, medical records, everything ….and they just kept asking for more,” he said.

“It was overwhelming on our part because somebody actually wanted to hear the information and see what we had to offer.”

As he left, Ernest remembers Makary reflecting on what he had inherited as the new commissioner of the FDA.

Ernest recalls Makary saying, “They left us a bunch of shit we’re trying to clean up here,” emphasising, “they were his exact words.”

For a man frozen out of every federal agency for years, the acknowledgement mattered.
“I feel like I got my foot in the door with the FDA,” Ernest said.

Becoming one of the 10

Ernest was among the first parents Høeg contacted.

Although the FDA has not named any of the ten children cited in Prasad’s memo, Ernest is certain Junior is one of them — and a senior government official has confirmed the same.

When critics online complained that “only ten” deaths were acknowledged in Prasad’s memo, Ernest saw something different.

“This is the beginning. We can’t flood them and overwhelm them,” he said. “This is a door opening.”

For the first time, he feels hopeful.

“I feel something positive is finally coming out,” he told me. “I see a little light at the end of the tunnel.”

Living with loss — and injury

“There’s nothing anyone can do that will bring my son back,” Ernest said. He lives with the weight of that every day.

Ernest has turned his grief into activism. He put up billboards and his trucks have been wrapped with photos of Junior, slogans, lot numbers.

“People stop me on the highway… they tell me their stories about how they were affected or their family members,” he said. “It feels like I can see weight lifted off their shoulder when they’re talking to me.”

He supports injured families through React-19 and Junior’s Guardian Voice.

Ernest also revealed that he suffered a vaccine injury himself, diagnosed by a doctor as causing neurological deficits — something he kept private for years because he did not want to distract from Junior’s case.

When he sees commentators online dismissing the FDA’s admission as “absurd” or “unscientific,” he refuses to let their detachment diminish his resolve.

“I just tell them you can’t educate the ignorant,” he said. “They’re already programmed… We need to keep going forward.”

A call for accountability

The FDA’s acknowledgment is only the beginning. For Ernest, recognition must lead to consequences.

“I want an apology… and I want accountability,” he said, pointing to public health officials like Fauci, whom he blames for his son’s death.

He believes civil and criminal accountability is warranted for officials whose job it was to prevent exactly this outcome.

Government officials have claimed they “couldn’t have known.” Ernest does not believe that. He has spent four years trying to get someone — anyone — in authority to tell the truth.

Now, inside the FDA, someone finally has.

“I do feel like it’s starting to come out,” he said. “The FDA seems sincere… it does put me in a better place, makes me feel a little bit better. I feel a little hope.”

Ernest said he hopes the FDA continues investigating.

HELP ERNEST WITH EXPENSES:

https://www.givesendgo.com/G28FK

JUNIOR’S WEBSITE:

https://www.jrsguardianvoice.com

REACT-19

https://react19.org/

---