JACKSON, Miss.—Because their stories don’t fit the “safe and effective” narrative about the COVID-19 vaccines, people with vaccine injuries have been—as one person reported—“left in the shadows.”
Among them was Elizabeth Tucker from Enterprise, Mississippi.
Within 15 minutes after receiving her COVID-19 vaccine at the pharmacy in 2021, Tucker began having one of what would become many severe adverse reactions to the vaccine that landed her in the hospital on multiple occasions.
Shaking and unable to breathe, Tucker—formerly an active personal trainer—left the pharmacy in an ambulance, then left the hospital in a wheelchair, from which she has had to find a new way of maneuvering in the world.
“My entire life has been turned upside down,” she told the audience.
Among Tucker’s symptoms are neurological issues and nerve and brain damage that prevents the signals for movement to travel to her limbs.
“I’m getting help, but it’s slow,” Tucker said.
However, she said, she’s turning it into an opportunity to bring awareness.
Death Sentence for a Career
Cody Flint was a commercial agricultural pilot in the Mississippi Delta for 15 years, a career he began at the age of 19.Thirty minutes after he received his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, he said he began having severe headaches that became a burning sensation on the back of his neck, accompanied by the feeling that he was hungover.
“At the time, the listed possible side effects included temporary headaches and dizziness, so I assumed this was normal,” he told the audience.
Despite the vaccine being touted as safe and effective, Flint said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required that pilots wait 48 hours after each jab before flying.
Within an hour of his flight two days later, Flint said his stabbing headache turned into severe tunnel vision and loss of focus.
The situation rapidly deteriorated and he decided it was no longer safe to fly, he said.
“While flying only a few hundred feet above the ground, I attempted to turn around and head back to the base,” Flint said. “Within one second, I felt an extreme burst of my pressure in my head and immediately slumped over in the seat of my airplane.”
Dizzy, disorientated and shaking, he somehow found a way to land the plane, though he said he doesn’t remember any of it.
“I can only attribute the landing to muscle memory and good luck,” Flint said.
His family doctor refused to acknowledge that what happened was the result of the vaccine and diagnosed him with vertigo and panic attacks, though he doesn’t have a history of either, he said.
Misdiagnosis to avoid the truth is a common theme among the vaccine injured, Flint said.
Seeking a second opinion, Flint underwent two days of diagnostic testing that included balance and hearing tests, an MRI, and a CT scan.
The lumbar puncture, he said, showed that his intracranial pressure was three times higher than normal, and the MRI scans showed that he had left and right perilymphatic fistulas, which is a tear in the membrane that separates the middle and inner ear.
The rupturing of this membrane causes perilymphatic fluid to flow from the inner ear into the middle ear, resulting in pressure changes that can cause balance and hearing problems.
“Following my vaccination, my intracranial pressure had risen so rapidly that it caused both of my inner ears to rupture simultaneously,” Flint said.
It was a death sentence for his career, Flint said, and over the next year, he underwent two surgeries to repair the fistulas and a half-dozen lumbar punctures to monitor his intracranial pressure and to remove the excess spinal fluid.
Flint must take a drug called Diamox to reduce the intracranial pressure, he said, which is on the FAA’s list of medications pilots can’t take and fly, with no better alternative.
“As of today, I still suffer from brain fog, tinnitus, confusion, memory loss, and random bouts of dizziness,” Flint said.
Despite this, like Tucker, he’s striving to turn his experience into a message to help others.
Support for the Vaccine Injured
Julia Marks, a California-based registered nurse and React19 volunteer, told the audience she suffered from a severe neurological disorder after her vaccine that left her feeling like she was dying for five months.Marks said her left side went numb, and she experienced internal vibrations and tremors.
“Today, I have nerve damage in my feet and hands,” Marks said.
With React19, Marks said she takes calls from the vaccine injured and connects them with physicians who won’t ignore them.
Thrown Away by Doctors
Within 20 minutes of Jeff Jackson’s second shot, the Mississippi native’s skin broke out into a rash and he began shedding skin all over his body.
A physician diagnosed him with multiple forms of psoriasis, Jackson said.
“The list goes on,” Jackson said. “I still don’t know everything that’s wrong with me because I was thrown away by the doctors.”
Sixteen months later, he met Dr. John Witcher, the co-founder and former president of MAM who stepped back from the leadership position to focus on his run for Mississippi governor in the 2023 gubernatorial election.
Father’s Grief Becomes Determination
Five days after Ernesto Ramirez’s 16-year-old son took the vaccine, he collapsed while running across a basketball court with a friend.“I never realized that evening when I said goodbye to him that I would never see him again,” Ramirez told the crowd.
Ramirez later filed with FEMA for funeral assistance but was denied because, according to Ramirez, he wouldn’t report his son’s death as a COVID death.
“They tried to bribe me to change my son’s death certificate so that it read COVID, and they’d pay me $10,000 to $35,000,” Ramirez said. “I told them I would never disrespect my son in that manner. I will never falsify government documents for financial gain.”
Angry at God, his son’s death sent him into a suicidal depression, he said.
“But then I realized that God didn’t do this to my son,” he said.
That’s when he began fighting.
Ramirez said he found a family in the vaccine-injured for whom he said he continues to fight.
“I’m not just fighting for me or my son,” Ramirez said. “I’m fighting for your children and grandchildren.”
A Bereaved Mother
Henrietta Simoes and her husband traveled from New York to share the story of their 34-year-old son’s death two weeks after taking his first dose of the vaccine.Their son, Victor, had to call 911 when he began experiencing headaches, chest pain, and jaw numbness, Simoes said.
“As paramedics were checking his vitals he collapsed and became unresponsive,” she said. “The ER doctor suspected he died of a vaccine-induced pulmonary embolism. But, in fact, the autopsy showed thoracic aortic dissection, which has a higher signal than myocarditis.”
An immunologist concluded that a blood serum analysis showed that Victor had suffered from a severe inflammatory response to the vaccine.
“My life is now that of a bereaved mother,” Simoes said. “I grieved for the life I envisioned and no longer have. I grieve for my other children who have lost a beloved brother and uncle to their future children. But mostly, I grieve for the life Victor did not get to live.”
The side effects of the vaccine aren’t rare when they happen to your son, Simoes said.
“I don’t want to ever hear again that the side effects are rare,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it was for the greater good. To those who say collateral damage is to be expected, I ask you which one of your children would you be willing to give up for the team?”
Simoes called the vaccine rollout a “fraud perpetrated on the American people by our government, health agencies, and Big Pharma.”
A State Senator Speaks Out
Not scheduled on the list of speakers was Mississippi state Sen. Mike McLendon, who said eight days after he took the vaccine his right leg began to swell, which later turned out to be caused by a blood clot.His doctor told him he would have to take the anticoagulant Xarelto “for the biggest part of your life,” McClendon said.
If he doesn’t, the blood clot could cause an aneurysm, he said.
“I can tell you this,” McClendon said. “This is one person out of the 52 senators that will not make anyone in Mississippi take the vaccine again.”
Dr. Peter McCullough, a practicing internist and cardiologist who is also the national adviser for MAM, spoke at the event and discussed the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data, which he said reflects an “embarrassing gross underestimate of what is happening in America.”
“Through Feb. 17, 2023, the CDC is verifying that 16,967 Americans have died shortly after the vaccine,” McCullough said. “Most of these deaths occur on the day they took the shot or the next few days afterward.”
There are 16,342 permanently disabled Americans in VAERS, he added, while 372,770 have been hospitalized for vaccine injuries, he said.
‘Reprimanded and Intimidated’
Deborah Conrad, a physician’s assistant of 20 years, was fired after blowing the whistle on the underreporting of adverse events in the VAERS system.Despite a federal legal requirement to submit vaccine adverse events into the VAERS database, Conrad said many in health care, like herself, weren’t aware of VAERS because of a failure to instruct personnel about the system.
After some research, she attempted to educate her health system’s leadership about the legal requirements for reporting to VAERS, as well as taking time out to file adverse events herself.
“As a result, I was reprimanded and intimidated, and leadership ultimately audited my reports and told me I could no longer file reports on any patients other than my own,” Conrad said.
By acknowledging the VAERS system and its federal reporting requirements, Conrad said leadership told her she was contributing to vaccine hesitancy.
“I was called an anti-vaxxer and told I must support the health care system’s approach to the vaccines and tow the company line,” Conrad said. “I was ultimately fired and locked out of my health system on Oct. 6, 2021, due to my attempt to educate health care workers, publicly inform patients, and fulfill my legal duty to file adverse events in the VAERS system.”
Echoing the vaccine-injured, physicians, and scientists who spoke at the event, Conrad called for the shots to halt and for an investigation into the VAERS reporting of hospitals, health clinics, and pharmacies administering the vaccines.
“Health care workers have not and are not being educated on their legal duty to report vaccine events to the adverse-reporting system,” Conrad said. “We cannot claim that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective if we do not enforce the reporting to assure they are safe and effective. Mississippi must stop the shots.”
