Introduction
Allsyia Finley, writing for the Wall Street Journal, exposed several disturbing issues: (1) While we do not know the percentage of people taking the covid vaccine that have suffered very serious negative consequences, we need to recognize that, at a minimum, a small percentage of people have been negatively impacted, (2) The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have provided scant resources to those people impacted and, (3) the CDC, NIH, and FDA have failed to inform the public that some people have suffered debilitating results. To date, government officials have not been transparent because they worry that recognizing severe side effects will fuel vaccine opposition.
Doctors are typically reluctant to ascribe a rare adverse event to a vaccine unless the FDA and CDC validate the association. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to conclude whether illnesses were caused by the vaccines. Finley concluded by saying it is possible that the vaccines are the proximate but not the ultimate cause—that they trigger autoimmune conditions with underlying genetic predispositions.
Brianne Dressen, who faced debilitating symptoms after taking the vaccine, said that the FDA has not followed up on almost all of their promises to warn the public about potential vaccine-related neurological complications. They have misled the public by claiming that they have a robust system to identity rare adverse events from the vaccine. Dressen stated, “I trusted that these programs that they are telling the public are there, but they are not.”
Until reading this article, I had scoffed at people who have not taken the vaccine. My position is now ambivalent.
Main Article
Finley named two people, Danice Hertz and Bianne Dressen, who have suffered severe neurological symptoms after receiving vaccine shots.
Ms. Dressen, 42, was among the first Americans to be vaccinated. She volunteered to participate in AstraZeneca’s trial, and received her first dose on Nov. 4, 2020, at a clinic in West Jordan, Utah. “I am pro-science and pro-vaccine,” Ms. Dressen says. “I was more than glad to participate in the scientific process.”
But even highly beneficial vaccines can have rare serious side effects. Minutes after the shot, Ms. Dressen’s arm began to tingle, her vision grew blurry, and sounds became muffled. The clinic suggested she see a neurologist, who directed her to the emergency room. The ER couldn’t figure out what was wrong and sent her home.
Her condition steadily deteriorated over the next 2½ weeks. She experienced extreme nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, painful vibrating sensations, pins and needles in her arms and face, numbness, tremors, brain fog, heart palpitations and fever. Physicians were mystified. They diagnosed her with a “silent migraine” and “anxiety due to the Covid vaccine” after a hospital stay. She was provided occupational and physical therapy but spent weeks in bed, unable to tolerate sound, light or even her children’s touch.
In the ensuing months, she faced not only debilitating symptoms but also bureaucratic indifference. Government officials tried to be helpful at first. Subsequently, the government stopped providing help.
After failed attempts to work remotely with Ms. Dressen’s home medical team, Dr. Nath invited her to an NIH facility in Bethesda, Md. for examination. Physicians there diagnosed her with postvaccine neuropathy and severe postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, which causes rapid heartbeat on standing up. She was treated with intravenous immunoglobulin, an infusion of antibodies from healthy donors that can modulate an overactive immune response.
The treatment helped, but symptoms persisted and would wax and wane. She learned that many others were experiencing similar symptoms after getting vaccinated. She organized online support groups, but Facebook shut them down under its “misinformation” policy, which bans information that is “likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine.” This includes “claims about the safety or serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines”—even, it appears, when such claims are truthful.
The Facebook censorship and government inaction spurred her to launch React19, a “science-based nonprofit offering financial, physical, and emotional support” for people who suffered severe reactions after Covid vaccines. React19 has more than 21,000 members in the U.S. and another 20,000 in 24 international partner organizations. It also has a Facebook page.
Facebook reported that they did not get responses from Pfizer or Moderna about adverse-event reports that they filed with the companies.
The U.S. Countermeasure Injury Compensation Program, which covers vaccines and treatments used during public-health emergencies, has received 11,686 Covid-related claims, only 23 of which have been ruled eligible for compensation. React19 members say almost all of their claims are “under review” or have been rejected.
Dr. Diane Hertz reported that within 30 minutes after getting her vaccine, her face began to burn and tingle, her vision grew blurred, and she became lightheaded. Over the next 24 hours, she developed intense burning in her face, numbness in her mouth and scalp, chest pain, dizziness, twitching and a feeling that her whole body was vibrating. “I had pain to the degree of screaming out loud.”
Dr. Hertz spent her days in bed searching the internet for a medical explanation: “I was desperately ill. I was unable to get medical care. I was suicidal at times. A lot of others went through this. I wrote goodbye letters to my family. It was too miserable to live with this.”
She wrote, “Despite my multiple reports to Pfizer, the C.D.C. and FDA, no one has recognized my complication or reported it. While NIH scientists were privately validating their vaccine-related injuries, FDA officials had yet to acknowledge them.
More than 600 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been given in the U.S., so even a 1-in-100,000 adverse effect would result in 6,000 cases. Postvaccine neurological conditions appear most common in young and middle-aged women, the demographic most prone to autoimmune diseases.
Conclusion
In an article from the New York Times, “Lessons from this Pandemic to be Ready for the Next,” that messaging about the coronavirus pandemic has been confusing. Accurate messaging is difficult because the science is often changing. Key experts say that public health leaders need to be upfront that the guidance that they give today may change tomorrow.
The C.D.C. was hamstrung during the pandemic by antiquated data systems and inconsistent data sharing between the federal government, states, and health providers. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped lead the pandemic response during the Trump and Biden administrations said, “We were in the embarrassing position of having to call up the U.K. and Israel or South Africa to find out what was going on, how many people were getting infected with the new vaccination. We literally had to wait months instead of getting it in real time. One of the things we have learned is that we closed schools much longer than other countries and this had a terrible impact on educational attainment.”
In the early months of the pandemic, frontline health workers faced dramatic supply shortages, forcing them to reuse face masks, wear ill-fitting personal protective gear, or go without such equipment altogether. Early treatments for the new virus were authorized by the FDA without strong data from randomized controlled trials. Trials for treatments stalled because of a lack of funding or participants.
Public health officials said the vaccines proved to be the most effective bulwark against hospitalization and death from Covid-19. The myopic focus on vaccines alone at the exclusion of other areas has been a mistake.
