IN-DEPTH: Three Michigan Lawmakers Say They Were Injured by COVID-19 Vaccines

John Corman, then the chief clinical officer at Virginia Mason, administers a COVID-19 vaccine at the Amazon Meeting Center in Seattle on Jan. 24, 2021. Grant Hindsley/AFP via Getty Images

Brad Paquette returned home after playing hockey late on a Sunday night and felt “a huge vacuum” in his chest.

Two months earlier, Paquette, a Michigan state representative, received a second COVID-19 vaccine. He developed an irregular heartbeat after the shot and went to the emergency room.

“When I was told I had an irregular heartbeat, I asked the doctor if it could be related to the shot, and if it could be myocarditis. He was hesitant to connect it to the vaccine,” Paquette said.

At the time, Paquette was 33 and had no preexisting conditions. He soon learned that he had suffered a heart attack and had developed myocarditis, which is a side effect of COVID-19 vaccines.

“I kept asking if it was the vaccine, and my doctors said probably not. Then, after having that heart attack, I asked if the vaccine could have caused the heart attack. They said no,” Paquette said.

“So, I asked it like this: ‘Could myocarditis cause a heart attack?’ They said yes. And I asked, ‘Could the vaccine cause myocarditis?’ They said yes.”

Paquette told his story during a COVID-19 vaccine injury town hall co-hosted on May 24 with two fellow Republican state legislators who also believe there were injured by COVID-19 vaccines.

Brad Paquette, a Michigan state representative, co-hosts a COVID-19 vaccine injury town hall and shares his personal story on May 24. Photo courtesy of Brad Paquette

Paquette eventually traveled to the Mayo Clinic, where he said he was told that the myocarditis resulted from the vaccine, but it was uncertain if the shot caused the heart attack.

Paquette was motivated to hold the town hall because he found it difficult to talk to medical professionals about the possibility of adverse reactions from the COVID-19 vaccine.

“The more questions I asked, the more it pushed me into delving deeper,” Paquette said. “You want to trust your doctor. But there are a lot of fishy things going on right now that people are going through, so when I had that happen to me firsthand, it got me pretty energetic about it.

“My hope is to reassure constituents who experienced similar injuries from the vaccine that they are not alone,” he added.

During the town hall, Paquette was joined by fellow Michigan Republican state legislators, Ken Borton and John Roth, along with a panel of physicians, medical researchers, lawyers, and scientists.

‘I Had My Suspicions’

Borton, 65, said he initially did not plan to get the vaccine. His wife works for a hospital and followed the mandate to get inoculated. When the couple planned a cruise, vaccination and a booster were required by the operator. After he received the booster at a superstore in Michigan, he started to notice pressure in the left side of his chest.

The next morning, during his annual physical, the nurse recognized that there was an issue with his heart. After undergoing a series of tests, Borton said he was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat and myocarditis.

A year later, at his next annual physical, Borton said the doctor told him he had suffered a heart attack since his previous visit. When he was 59, he had no adverse health conditions.

“I had my suspicions about the vaccine, but I thought, ‘You know, I’m a healthy guy. My immune system will take care of this,’” said Borton, who was previously hospitalized with COVID-19.

Ken Borton, a Michigan state representative, talks about his health issues after getting the COVID-19 vaccine at a virtual town hall on May 24. Photo courtesy of Ken Borton

“After I got [the vaccine], I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know I even got it. You know, because I just felt like I gave in,” Borton explained. “Now that I am speaking about my story, I’m finding that other people who took the vaccine feel the same way—reluctant and embarrassed.

“I think it’s important to talk about it because there is so much we are not being told about adverse reactions and potential long-term health effects from the vaccine,” he continued.

‘It Was All About Pushing the Vaccine’

Roth also took the vaccine to join his wife on a vacation. He started feeling pressure in his chest after getting the shot and was told he had a heart attack.

Prior to getting the vaccine, Roth experienced the drawback of speaking out about vaccines as a member of the state legislature’s vaccine commission.

“There was never any conversation about any kind of history and any potential health issues. It was all about pushing the vaccine out there and nothing else,” he explained. “There were two Republicans on that committee, and they never asked us for any of our opinions. It was frustrating to have no input whatsoever.”

Even suggesting there are adverse reactions and deaths from COVID-19 vaccines is “taboo at every level of our society,” said Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, founder of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge.

“It’s a political taboo, it’s a scientific taboo, it’s a medical taboo,” Lyons-Weiler said. “The taboo is that no one is allowed to know about vaccine injury. And if you know about it, you’re not allowed to talk about it, especially about vaccine deaths, even when we have something as serious as myocarditis, blood clots, brain issues, and strokes.

Dr. David Brownstein, founder of the Columbus, Ohio-based Center for Holistic Medicine, believes that “rigorous studies” should be done to see whether a spike in illnesses and deaths is related to the COVID-19 vaccine.

“I’ve been practicing medicine for 30 years. I don’t recall seeing myocarditis in relatively healthy 40 to mid to late 60-year-olds. I don’t recall seeing people 40 years old to [that] same age group getting strokes. And you know, I don’t recall people 40 years old to that age, dying in their sleep," Brownstein said during the town hall.

“We’re seeing patients who were healthy, and then after getting the vaccine, they started experiencing problems,” Brownstein said. “We need to find out what’s going on.”

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is an intramuscular injection. Tamer Adel Soliman/Shutterstock

COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers are mostly immune from litigation in the United States because of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act declaration implemented by the Trump administration in early 2020. To date, three people who suffered myocarditis from the COVID-19 vaccine have been compensated.

A woman who suffered severe nerve damage after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination and four others with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 vaccine injuries launched a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and his administration on May 22.

Brianne Dressen and the other plaintiffs say that top government officials violated their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly when they pressured Big Tech companies to crack down on people sharing their experiences after receiving the COVID-19 vaccines.

Discussing Solutions

The town hall panelists discussed potential legislation and measures to encourage the uncensored study of COVID-19, future pandemics, and vaccines.

“I was investigated for prescribing ivermectin, which is an FDA-approved drug that I was using off-label that is completely legal. There really is no reason for my medical board to be even investigating that,” said Dr. James Neuenschwander, founder of Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Bio Energy Medical Center.

He would like to see legislation put into place that prevents an investigation when practicing legally.

Neuenschwander, a former emergency room physician, also recommended the institution of mandatory reporting for suspected vaccine injuries.

“If somebody came into the ER and I suspected child abuse, I was required by law to report that. Whether it was really child abuse or not was not my responsibility. But if I suspected it, I had to report it,” he explained.

“If we had reporting mandates for vaccine injuries—if somebody comes in after vaccine and they have an injury, and that’s reported—then we would actually see the scope of the problem that we have, and the types of symptoms we have.”