Americans who claim they were badly injured by the Covid vaccines feel they are being ignored and gaslighted by the government.
Over 13,000 formal complaints about adverse reactions to the shots have been filed since 2021 – but only 19 percent have been reviewed.
And just 12 patients have been compensated at an average of about $3,600, a figure which some have called insultingly low given the debilitating health issues they have been left with.
Experts say that researchers who’ve tried to investigate the little-understood side effect profile of Covid vaccines have been blocked by government officials and scientists who fear that even entertaining the possibility that vaccines can cause harm would fuel the anti-vax, which become bigger and louder during the pandemic.
Still, people are suffering from a range of conditions that came on soon after getting their first shot, including brain damage, tinnitus, neurological syndromes, facial paralysis, heart trouble, and shingles.
Michelle Zimmerman, 37, a neuroscience PhD, had to move back into her parents after she was diagnosed with brain damage after getting the Covid shot
Shaun Barcavage, a 54-year-old nurse practitioner in New York, said that merely standing up would make his heart race ever since he got his first Covid shot, which suggests a syndrome that causes disupted blood flow throughout the body
Unlike several countries like Australia, Canada, and Denmark, which have centralized health records compiled on a single database, the US has no such thing, leaving scientists to sift through reports of mild to severe side effects, of which there are more than four million lodged to the CDC’s voluntary adverse reporting website.
Before Michelle Zimmerman, 37, had to say goodbye to her career as a neuroscientist, her regular 20-mile bike rides, and her lectures on the latest in AI, she had received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in 2021.
No longer able to stand up on her own for long periods of time, and eventually diagnosed with brain damage, Dr Zimmerman had to move back in with her parents. She is convinced the vaccine she got came from a contaminated batch.
She told the New York Times: ‘When I let myself think about the devastation of what this has done to my life, and how much I’ve lost, sometimes it feels even too hard to comprehend.’
Dr Zimmerman submitted her application for the Covid vaccine compensation program in October 2021, but it took two years for that claim to be acknowledged by the federal government. She has yet to receive any help from government officials.
She is far from the only one who has submitted such a claim. The Health Resources and Services Administration’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), 13,116 claims have been filed, of which more than 10,000 are still in review.
Twelve claims have been compensated at an average of about $3,600. This is because the office recognizes so few side effects as stemming from the Covid vaccine.
Shaun Barcavage, a 54-year-old nurse practitioner in New York, said that merely standing up would make his heart race ever since he got his first Covid shot.
His symptoms suggested postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a condition in which the body cannot regulate the flow of blood properly, causing lightheadedness, fainting, and rapid heartbeat.
POTS has been tenuously linked to the vaccines, but more often with Covid infection itself.
Mr Barcavage, who in his career has worked on clinical trials for both HIV and Covid, said: ‘I can’t get the government to help me. I am told I’m not real. I’m told I’m rare. I’m told I’m coincidence.’
And Dr Gregory Poland, 68, who edits the journal Vaccine, has had a loud whoosing sound in his ears accompany every single second since he got his shot, and now fears never having a silent moment again.
His colleagues at the CDC did not take on his pleas for further research into the post-vaccine phenomenon.
Dr Gregory Poland, editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine, has had tinnitus since he got his vaccine
Dr Buddy Creech, a vaccine researcher at Vanderbilt University, has suffered tinnitus and a racing heartbeat after each dose
Covid vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech as well as Johnson and Johnson – which is no longer available – have been credited with averted at least three million deaths in the US and around 20 million globally due to the virus.
But even the best vaccines are not perfect, and when given to more than 270 million Americans in nearly 677 million doses, adverse reactions are bound to crop up.
Scientists fear the minority of vaccine recipients who have experienced severe reactions that have upended their lives are being ignored by federal officials with the power to initiate and fund more research into the matter.
Dr Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University, said: ‘At least long Covid has been somewhat recognized’, added people complaining of post-vaccine injuries are ‘just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted.’
Dr Janet Woodcock, who headed the FDA from January 2021 through February 2022 during a crucial time which which early vaccines and treatments were being reviewed, told the New York Times that she wished government officials would hear those people out.
She said: ‘I feel bad for those people. I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.
‘I’m disappointed in myself. I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.’
The understaffed office heading the complaints database has left suffering Americans feeling let down by what was meant to be a highly specific, high efficient means of recourse for Covid shot recipients.
Renee France, 49 of Seattle, developed a form of facial paralysis called Bell’s palsy causing one side of her face to droop, which can be a reaction to a viral infection as well as the flu vaccine. She also developed shingles that caused a severe rash that crossed her face and debilitated her for weeks.
Researchers have estimated that Covid vaccines averted more than 19.8 million deaths. The red line shows the deaths that would have occurred had there not been any vaccines available, and blue shading represents all of the deaths directly averted by vaccines
She submitted her claim to the database two times but heard nothing back. Like many other patients, her doctor dismissed her fears that the symptoms were side effects of her Covid shot. People have complained of being brushed off and labeled anti-vax by family and friends, despite their support for vaccines.
Dr. Buddy Creech, 50, who led several Covid vaccine trials at Vanderbilt University and suffered tinnitus and racing heartbeat for about a week after each shot, said: ‘When our patients experience a side effect that may or may not be related to the vaccine, we owe it to them to investigate that as completely as we can.’
Countries that store patient data in a single place have conducted more extensive research into side effects simply because they can spot them easier.
The CDC’s adverse events reporting system is voluntary, so anyone can file a report, and the reports are not verified by the agency as being true or unbiased.
In addition to poring over the CDC system, researchers have to sift through insurance claims, and even then there are gaps.
Shots given at mass vaccination sites that cropped up in parking lots across the country did not file vaccine claims with insurers.
Rebecca Chandler, a vaccine safety expert at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, said: ‘It’s harder to see signals when you have so many people, and things are happening in different parts of the country, and they’re not all collected in the same system.’
But in China, Europe, and Israel, scientists have actively sought out instances of adverse reactions, even mild ones, in order to study them further.
The European Medicines Agency has uncovered and linked facial paralysis and numbness to the Pfizer and Moderna shots, which the US has not, despite there being nearly 3,000 reports of facial paralysis on the CDC’s voluntary database.
And Israeli authorities were first to spot an unusual side effect in April 2021 primarily among young men after a second dose of a Pfizer or Moderna shot – inflammation of the heart muscle, also known as myocarditis.
Meanwhile, the CDC maintained there was no strong link between heart inflammation and Covid vaccines. That continued until the agency decided the following May to investigate a smattering of reports of heart inflammation in teenagers that occurred just a few days after they got a dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
But despite the 16,700 reports of tinnitus, the 9,000 reports of vertigo, the 7,000 reports of irregularly fast heart beat, the 3,800 reports of Bell’s palsy, or any of the other millions of adverse event reports submitted to the CDC’s system, the NIH is not conducting thorough research into the matter.
Dr William Murphy, a cancer researcher of 12 years at the NIH who has been pushing for these investigations, said that officials told him the same hackneyed phrase he had been hearing for years: the virus is worse.
He said: ‘Yes, the virus is worse, but that doesn’t obviate doing research to make sure that there may be other options.’
