How the NIH Admitted COVID Vaccine Injury in a Suppressed Study: Dr. Joel Wallskog

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “The Department of Health and Human Services is sitting on over 12,000 claims by Americans injured by the COVID shots. … They have a denial rate of 98 percent,” says Dr. Joel Wallskog, an orthopedic surgeon who became permanently disabled after getting a COVID-19 genetic vaccine.

In this episode, he shares his story, and he breaks down how compensation for COVID-19 vaccine injury claims is treated quite differently from compensation for other vaccine injuries.

We also dive into what the NIH actually knows about treating the COVID-19 vaccine-injured, something that was revealed in a suppressed preprint report.

Dr. Wallskog is the co-chair of React19, a support organization for the vaccine-injured.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Dr. Joel Wallskog such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Dr. Joel Wallskog:
Thank you for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s start with Covid-19 vaccine injury. You work with numerous Covid vaccine injured people, and you are injured as well. Please give us a picture of the range of injuries that you have found in some of the 36,000 people that are part of React19.

Dr. Wallskog:
Every Covid vaccine injured person is unique. There’s not just one syndrome. It’s really a constellation of different syndromes. We did a survey of preliminary results for 850 people. The average number of symptoms these injured people are reporting is 43 for each person. Most of their syndromes can fall into three buckets.

There’s the anaphylaxis group, the people that get the shot and have an immediate severe allergic reaction, and that also includes the mast cell disorder group. There’s an autoimmune group. Lastly, there’s the inflammatory group which includes blood clotting disorders and myocarditis. There are really a plethora of different syndromes.

Unfortunately, there’s no ongoing research into these injuries. Therefore, we don’t have great diagnoses and they’re very vague. We don’t have great diagnostics or testing. We don’t have specific treatments. The FLCCC [Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance], is developing treatment protocols, but many of them are what I would call empiric.

Empiric means they’re just trying things that make sense pathologically, physiologically, or from a mechanism of action. But they’re just empiric treatments. We really need better defined diagnoses, more specific diagnostic testing, and more specific treatments.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about this preprint from 2022, published by NIH scientists.
There were 23 people that were flown out to NIH and assessed for Covid vaccine injury. In many cases, they were treated successfully, so there is some research being done.

Dr. Wallskog:
There is scant research being done, but that’s an important study the public needs to know about. Early on, several people were reporting in 2021 that they had neurological adverse events. Brianne Dressen, who is my co-chair at React19, was one of those 23 Americans, mostly women, flown out to the NIH, housed there, and studied. The NIH admitted they all had neurological adverse events to the shots.

Treatment protocols were made. They had a preprint article about the group, which came out later in 2022, about a year later. First of all, that preprint said that time was of the essence. The quicker you can get to people, the more likely the treatment will be successful. They also talked about treatments that are available like steroids. If steroids don’t work, there is IVIG [Intravenous Immune Globulin].

But the problem is that information never got out to the healthcare system in general. React19 has been the one communicating these treatment protocols that were made public by the NIH in 2021, and never recognized by the FDA or CDC. We are often the ones that ask people, “Have you tried this? Have you tried that? Have you tried IVIG?” For certain people, IVIG can be life-changing.

Mr. Jekielek:
The protocols they used, for some reason not detailed in this paper,
actually worked in some of these cases, like in Brianne Dressen’s case. They know how it works and how they can treat it.

Dr. Wallskog:
A lot of the people got better. If you look at the preprint, it sounds like they are cured, and we know a lot of those. I’m estimating that we know about 12 of the 23, but they’re not all cured. Brianne Dressen still gets IVIG every other week. But without the knowledge that select group received through the NIH, they would not have gotten any improvement.

But think about how many thousands of people could benefit if that type of information was communicated from the NIH, was recognized by the FDA, and was recognized by the CDC. Brianne and I have been on a Zoom call with Peter Marks, who is the head of biologics at the FDA, and we talked to him about this. We asked, “Dr. Marks, why don’t you communicate this preprint information of this case series that was done by Dr. Avindra Nath, who is a very respected researcher at the NIH?” But when we talked to Dr. Marks, it just fell on deaf ears.

Mr. Jekielek:
There are people in government agencies that know Covid vaccine injury is actually real. They know how to treat at least some of the manifestations and there’s even this preprint, but there is no communication about this broadly. With the Covid vaccine injured, most doctors simply don’t look at the vaccine as a cause of these symptoms. How do you understand that?

Dr. Wallskog:
This is complicated. I saw some of the emails back and forth between Dr. Avindra Nath and Brianne and some other people, and I really think they wanted to help. Early on, they said, “We have to work on this, we want to get this preprint out, we want to help people.” Then there was a sudden stop and a ghosting. I think his intentions were good, but he got directions from elsewhere that said, “Stop this.”

Remember, that’s no different than some of the directions that came from the White House to social media companies to censor anything which might compromise the narrative that the Covid shots are the only way out of the pandemic. There is a lot of directed censorship, and sometimes I don’t know where it comes from.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about your personal journey, because you were Covid vaccine injured. You were a medical doctor in a very different field from what you’re working on now. You suffered a pretty serious vaccine injury.

Dr. Wallskog:
First of all, I don’t want anyone’s sympathy. I’ve been very blessed throughout my whole life. What I do now, I don’t do for myself. I feel blessed to be able to help these people. By forming React19 and being an advocate for all these injured people, I certainly receive more than I ever give.

I was a board-certified, orthopedic surgeon, licensed in the state of Texas and Wisconsin. I really had a great career and was in practice for about 20 years. I had a very mature practice, meaning I just had to show up for work. I had a very large patient base and I operated two days a week for about 12 to 14 hours per day. I had a big team with several PAs, nurses, and nurse practitioners. I also did a clinic three days a week.

I was just on the hamster wheel of life and loved it. I married my college sweetheart, had four great kids, and was living the dream life. I accomplished everything I wanted to achieve. It was great, but it all came to a screeching halt in early 2021.

I was the product of the healthcare system that I had been part of for decades. The healthcare workers were called the 1a group, and we were getting the shots first. At the end of December of 2020, I got an email that said, “Your number’s up, come and get your shot.” I drove down to a hospital, got my shot at lunchtime, then went back to work. It was unremarkable.

But about seven days later, I remember waking up and saying to my wife, “My feet are numb, it feels like pins and needles.” It was pretty dramatic. I’ve had some neck problems in the past and I thought maybe I had a disc that was touching on my spinal cord. At that point, I had no thought about the shot being related whatsoever .

I called a friend of mine and they got an MRI of my neck because I figured maybe that was it. Then maybe five to seven days later, I was sitting across from a patient in the clinic, and when I tried to stand up my legs wouldn’t move. I remember using my hands to push off the examining table, and I fell backwards. I just had no control of my legs.

It was at that point I knew something serious and more ominous was going on. I clearly thought I had a brain tumor or something more serious with the spinal cord. Being part of the healthcare system, I picked up the phone and called an MRI center and said, “I’m coming in,” and got MRIs of my brain and spinal cord. They ended up finding a demyelinated lesion of my spinal cord at that thoracic, T8 or T9 level. That’s where I got a diagnosis of transverse myelitis.

Within two days, I quickly saw a neurologist and started high-dose steroids and a few other things. I wanted to make sure I didn’t have anything else, so they ordered a bunch of tests looking for multiple sclerosis and similar problems. Everything else was negative, except this lesion of my spinal cord. Again, I still never put two and two together about the shot, even though my symptoms started and I got hit by a Mack truck within about seven days after the shot.

I still didn’t put this together until I remembered having read about the AstraZeneca trials of the Covid-19 shots in the UK. Those trials in the UK were delayed twice for just three cases of transverse myelitis. That’s when I started putting things together. I talked to my neurologist and he said, “Possibly, but you don’t know.” He also told me, and I want to quote him, “Joel, I don’t want to get involved.”

That’s the attitude many of the injured people get from the providers who do not want to be involved, because they don’t want to get attacked for saying that problems are caused by the vaccine. As soon as I got that diagnosis of transverse myelitis, I reported my injury to VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System], because of the AstraZeneca trial in the UK that got delayed twice for just three cases of transverse myelitis.

I thought this was big. In my naive world, I thought someone from the CDC would be contacting me that day. Days passed and weeks passed. Nothing. I was really thinking about the general public. I thought, “The UK thing was so serious that they stopped the trial twice for these three cases. Why aren’t they calling me?” Finally, after about four weeks, I called the CDC.

I talked to a physician from the CDC and they said they would get back to me. I had to fill out another report or two. She said that transverse myelitis was a diagnosis of interest to them, but then nothing happened. To this day, I’ve had no further interaction from them and no follow-up.

If you look, my report is still in VAERS and I’m listed as not serious. I asked her about that and she said, “By federal law, to be called serious in VAERS, you either have to die or be hospitalized. My neurologist did recommend that I get hospitalized, but I really don’t like being in hospitals, especially as a patient.

At that point I said, “Listen, I’m potentially lifelong disabled. How can this not be serious?” She replied, “Well, that’s the law.” Then I said, “That’s crazy.” To this day, I am listed in VAERS as having transverse myelitis and it being non-serious. Even though, at this point, I’m permanently disabled. I’ve lost my career, which is okay. It certainly took a while for me to be okay with it. But it’s a crazy system.

Mr. Jekielek:
At one point, I had a career in biology, but ended up with Guillain-Barre syndrome which destroyed my career and put me on this path to the Epoch Times. Having someone like you advocating for Covid vaccine-injured people is a huge blessing for them. It’s interesting how life works.

Dr. Wallskog:
It’s actually a blessing for me. For my entire life, I had everything that I wanted. Everything that I wanted to achieve, I did. Now, this is something that was completely out of my control. The year 2021 brought the question of, “What am I going to do next?” One of the transformational events for me through this whole process was in November of 2021, I was invited to speak with several injured people, including Brianne Dressen, who is now my co-chair at React19.

Early on, back in 2021, people looked at you like you were crazy. If you said that you had an adverse reaction to the shot, they said, “You’re nuts. You have an anxiety problem,” which I don’t. The one word that describes 2021 for me is—abandoned. You were out in the open. You were on an island and you thought, “I’m alone and there is no one else like me.” You were literally shunned.

You could tell when people looked at you. You could tell when you tried to talk to providers and they rolled their eyes, or when you heard all the little ways that we get gaslit. But when I went out to D.C. and we had that press conference with Senator Johnson, it was transformational for me, seeing that I wasn’t alone and seeing how much these other people were struggling.

Again, I’m very fortunate in life and I’ve been blessed my whole life. I left there and I remember getting in the Uber and going back to the airport. I called my wife and said, “I know what I have to do.” That’s really the start of React19.

I have to say Brianne Dressen is really the founder of React19. React19 is a great place for me to be. React 19 existed even before November of 2021. She ran it as a support group on a website. But we agreed, and all of the people that were out in D.C. agreed that they wanted to make it a real organization, so we formed a Wisconsin-based corporation. It’s like a startup company. We made bylaws, elected officers, and applied for our 501(c)(3) status, which we got.

We started with those 10 people and now we represent over 36,000 Americans injured by the shots. We have 18 international partners.
I’m sure we’re the largest advocacy organization in the world. It’s not because we tried, and it’s not because we advertised. They just kept coming, and they still keep coming.

Mr. Jekielek:
In the Unseen Crisis documentary that features Brianne Dressen and other Covid vaccine injured, a comparison was made of the amount of money given out by the existing compensation programs vs. by React 19, which indeed has made a point of helping Covid vaccine injured with their recovery. Can you update those numbers for me?

Dr. Wallskog:
These people are physically, emotionally, and financially abandoned. A lot of these people can’t work because they are disabled. They go through Social Security disability and get rejected. It takes a year or two to get a response. Many of these people are truly, financially devastated.
Because of the Prep Act, we can’t sue.

Back in 2020, the government declared a public health emergency. When there’s a public health emergency, the Prep Act is activated, just let me say it that way. The Prep Act gives blanket immunity to pharma, to the government, to our healthcare organizations, and to healthcare providers, so they’re completely immune and we can’t sue them. All of the normal FDA regulatory rules and processes are thrown out the window. A normal vaccine often takes 5 to 10 years to get approved. In a public health emergency, all the FDA regulations and norms go out the window.

There is a compensation program that has existed for decades called the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program [VICP]. It is a real program with real money. I believe it has like $4 billion in it right now, and it’s pharma-funded.
Every time a vaccine dose is made or sold, pharma has to pay an excise tax of say, $0.75 to this fund.

If your child gets injured by a vaccine that’s on the childhood schedule, you can apply to the VICP program, which is like a court. It has judges that know the rules and it’s a real program. Remember, the Covid shots weren’t vaccines. They were considered countermeasures because of the public health emergency, so we have to apply to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program [CICP]. That program is a dismal failure.

Right now, the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] is sitting on over 12,000 claims by Americans injured by the Covid shots.
They have a denial rate of 98 percent. These numbers are from January 1, 2024, reported on the CDC’s website They have a 98 percent denial rate. The average payout is about $3,700. Remember, these are people that have been decimated by the vaccine and they only get $3,700.

At React19, the number one thing we raise money for is our CARE-fund. Our CARE-fund is a program that pays injured Americans financial grants of up to $10,000 for uncovered medical expenses. I’m very proud of what we have done. We have paid out well over $750,000 through very grassroots fundraising.

The average donation we receive is about $80. We have zero corporate funding, but believe me, I have tried. I have reached out to some big-name celebrities, people you think might be helpful, but without success. It’s just grassroots fundraising that has raised this money. The grants that we have given out add up to over $750,000, given out to about 107 people.

That’s just a drop in the bucket, so it’s heartbreaking. When we give out the money, these people absolutely need it. Some are living in their cars. I look at every application and see their financials and bank accounts. It’s heartbreaking; savings at zero, retirement at zero, checking at only $300. It’s just heartbreaking.

Mr. Jekielek:
You give out a maximum of $10,000 per person.

Dr. Wallskog:
To be fair, they have to wait at least a year to reapply for the grant program. But, again, this is a drop in the bucket. This problem needs millions, and maybe even billions of dollars in order to help these people. I truly believe it should be pharma-funded. That’s why our organization demands legislation where the CICP claims are transferred to the VICP with what we call retroactivity. That means those injured in the last three years can still apply to the VICP, or if they applied to the CICP and got denied, they can then apply to the VICP.

Mr. Jekielek:
For anyone who wants to reach out to React19 or donate to the CARE-fund, how do they contact you?

Dr. Wallskog:
The best way to reach us is through our website, www.react19.org. If anyone wants to donate, you can also do that through our website. We are really desperate for donations. It’s rough and these people need help. I promise your viewers that we are a 100 percent volunteer organization. None of us take a cent from the organization.

The other way people can donate is text the word REACT to the number 50155. If people are looking to apply for the CARE-fund, please go to the website as well. If anyone has any specific questions about the CARE-fund, they should email CAREfund at react19.org.

Mr. Jekielek:
A year ago, you talked about how 80 percent of the injuries that you had seen at that time were neurological. In the legacy media, you hear a lot more about myocarditis signals.

Dr. Wallskog:
Yes, overall, with the Covid shot injuries, about 80 percent of people’s adverse events include a neurological component. There has been a lot of focus on myocarditis. But in our most recent survey of the people that were injured, only about 5 percent were diagnosed with myocarditis. We’re trying to communicate that the neurological adverse events are very common and unfortunately not well recognized.

Now, that’s not to say that myocarditis isn’t significant. Many of the people that have myocarditis are often young, healthy males who really didn’t need a shot anyway, so it’s certainly a tragedy. Most recently, The Epoch Times reported that in 2021 there were communications within governmental agencies that they should alert the public with a safety signal for myocarditis. Unfortunately, they opted to not send out that communication. That was in 2021, almost three years ago.

It’s a tragedy that they openly decided to censor that information. There was a trail of censorship on anything against the narrative of the Covid shots being the only way out of the pandemic. That robs the American public of informed consent, and informed consent is very important. As physicians, we have to tell patients the risks, benefits, and options. What’s the risk of Covid to a 16-year-old male? Not much. The infection fatality rate [IFR] is zero. What are the benefits? What are the treatment options? Have they had Covid? What about natural immunity? None of those conversations ever occurred.

To give the American public informed consent, you have to trust them. You have to give them information. I truly believe the FDA, the CDC, and the NIH really think the American public is dumb, which is not true. If you give people information, they can make their own choices. Again, we’re living in America where you should have individual liberty and be able to make those choices. Robbing us of that safety signal information in 2021 was wrong. It was unethical and immoral.

Mr. Jekielek:
Informed consent is a foundational principle of medicine.

Dr. Wallskog:
Absolutely. Many people think it’s just signing a form. Informed consent is not just signing a form. The form is confirmation that a conversation occurred about the risks, benefits, and possible alternatives to the proposed intervention. Now, you have the FDA recognizing there is growing hesitancy not just to the Covid-19 shots, but also growing hesitancy to the broader vaccine schedule. What a surprise.

The American public is starting to get it. They were told, “Safe and effective. Prevents infection. Prevents transmission.” People are starting to figure this out. Even Anthony Fauci said recently that that six-foot rule just came out of thin air. A lot of things happened that they said were already in place and were all science-based.

But people are starting to understand that everything they were told wasn’t necessarily true. People are waking up. How do we know that? Look at the uptake of the current boosters. According to the FDA, it is dismal. Peter Marks just wrote a viewpoint in the online Journal of American Medical Association and asked if vaccine hesitancy was at a turning point. He meant that if the American public is now growing hesitant towards the Covid shots, is that going to transfer to hesitancy about the overall vaccine schedule?

The American public is losing trust in our federal regulatory agencies. The FDA’s sole mission is to protect the American public from drugs and medical devices. It is not to promote vaccines. Yet, you can see those little cartoon ads that Peter Marks creates that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s not their job. They are not there to promote these countermeasures, like the Covid shots.

They are there to protect us. They are the ones that are supposed to be looking at the data, showing us the data, and gaining our trust. In his viewpoint, all he says is that the healthcare community and pharmacists need to be better at messaging.

The problem isn’t messaging. The problem is the trust of the American public, which they’re losing. He fails to understand how he, his office, and the FDA themselves are part of that growing mistrust, because we were told a lot of things that just weren’t true.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is your advice to the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH, given everything that we’ve seen to date?

Dr. Wallskog:
Number one, eliminate conflicts of interest. Everybody knows that anybody good at the CDC or FDA that’s very pro-pharma ends up getting a board of directors or getting a big job at pharma when they leave. Next, stop direct pharma marketing to consumers. We stopped it with cigarettes.

In my opinion, pharma shouldn’t directly advertise to consumers because they’re driving their products and the average American consumer doesn’t know enough. But then that patient goes to the doctor and says, “I want this product.” Stop that direct-to-consumer marketing.

Mr. Jekielek:
There are huge amounts of money being channeled into media companies from big pharma to do this marketing. It also potentially creates another conflict of interest. Are you really going to report on some of these serious issues if you’re getting 50 percent of your billion dollar revenue from pharma companies that wouldn’t approve of your reporting?

Dr. Wallskog:
Absolutely. Remember, pharma money goes to media companies, and if they are supportive of the pharma companies, they’re more likely to get more ads. But that pharma money also goes to our scientific journals. Pharma money feeds right into those scientific journals and feeds right into those researchers.

If you continually do research that shows bad results with a company’s product, and they’re the funder of the study, you’re not going to get business. Don’t forget, pharma money has also infiltrated our political system. Pharma money is everywhere and that’s a big problem.

But getting back to what I would recommend, one of the big things that regulatory agencies need to do is to go back to true and transparent science. Show the data. Remember, people don’t understand who owns the data on the Covid shots from the clinical trials. People think, “Oh, it’s the government.” No, it’s not. Pharma owns it. That’s why they didn’t want to release it for 75 years.

Get the data out there and show things both good and bad. Again, in science, you make a hypothesis. You test it. It may work out for you and you may get results that you expect. You may get results that you don’t expect, but that’s science. Even after you make a conclusion, you may end up getting new data that’s contrary and may change your ultimate conclusion. That’s science and it’s okay to be wrong.

But to not admit you’re wrong when you are wrong is evil. That is really where they failed. Fauci said, “I am the science.” What? That is an insult to the American public. Science isn’t absolute. People do make mistakes and they need to be truthful about it. They need to show true and transparent data. They need to regain the trust of the American people.

Mr. Jekielek:
One of the most valuable things would be radical transparency around data, because that would show goodwill. There are people from other areas who have expertise in numbers who have started tackling what scant data is available and making fascinating discoveries out of that data. There is an ecosystem ready to handle this data and deal with it, ethically and rigorously. That would be very valuable and we could learn some things very quickly.

Dr. Wallskog:
Science should be reproducible. If you say, “I’ve figured out this solution, it should be reproducible. You should have someone else look at that same information and say, “Yes, I verify that this works.” Part of science is reproducibility, but they have hidden so much of this data.

Most of this data has come out through Freedom of Information Act releases, or court cases where organizations or law firms were suing to get data released. That is a tragedy. If you’re continually hiding things, what does that say? That’s why I get very suspicious that there is always more going on behind the scenes.

Mr. Jekielek:
What legislation are you involved with, and what is the status of these lawsuits that React19 is involved in?

Dr. Wallskog:
We have been fairly active in Washington, D.C. at the federal level, really working towards compensation reform. The current compensation program for the Covid shot injuries is the CICP, which is really a dismal failure. In the last two years, we have been to D.C. numerous times, meeting with independents, Republicans, and Democrats. Our call is completely non-partisan, let me put it that way. They all agree that the CICP has failed. The problem is there has been little action in D.C.

However, I do want to say that there are two House bills that are floating around called House Bill 5142, and 5143, which have to do with modernizing the VICP and transferring the CICP claims with retroactivity over to the VICP. We support that legislation. Now, it’s just a proposed bill and there’s no companion bill yet, or something similar in the Senate. It’s certainly not on the President’s desk for signature. It has really kind of stalled, which is frustrating.

We raised some money and we are having the first ever Covid vaccine shot lobbyist in D.C. for about four months. It’s Kyle Warner, a professional mountain bike rider, who is a great guy. I call him cool, calm, and collected, and he’s perfect to represent us.

He’s going to go out to D.C. to lobby for us full-time for four months. You can have a lot of phone calls with some of the politicians and their health aides, but face-to-face time is very important, so we’re doing that. If we can get more funding, which would be a blessing, I’d love to have a full-time person out there all year, because it’s important and we need to get this legislation going. We need to get these people real compensation, not $3,700 for getting myocarditis. They need real compensation, like people do receive in the VICP.

I don’t want the taxpayers to have to pay the bill like they do in the CICP. I want pharma to fund it. That’s what happens at the VICP, pharma funds that program. Believe it or not, the biopharma lobbyist group supports 5142, and 5143, which actually surprises me. It’s also supported by the Vaccine Injury Trial Association. It is good legislation that is ready to go, but it’s just not going anywhere.

I see this as an urgent need. These people that are injured need money, to put food on the table, to put clothes on their kids’ backs, and to pay their mortgage. It has been frustrating. When I’m out there in DC, they don’t feel that urgency, so that’s why we’ve gotten involved in some litigation.

React19 and six individual injured people filed suit October of 2023, against HHS for infringement on the fifth and seventh amendment of the Constitution. The fifth amendment is the right to due process. The seventh amendment has to do with the right to a jury trial. We are denied those rights through the CICP.

There is no jury. We submit an application, like we did in May of 2021 and it goes into this black hole, as Aaron Siri describes it. You don’t know who reviews it. You don’t know what criteria they use. You just wait and wait for a denial. As I said, the program is at 98 percent denial rate. It took me 18 months to get a denial, just like 98 percent of the people were getting denied.

Then I appealed. I submitted one of Dr. Avindra Nath’s papers that talks about transverse myelitis as being recognized after the Covid shots. I said, “How can you deny that transverse myelitis isn’t related? I was totally healthy until seven days after the shot.” I appealed 14 months ago and I still don’t have a response to my appeal. Now, I know my appeal will be denied. That’s the dismal state of that system.

As we wait for legislative reform and compensation, we’re really forced to go to the courts. We’re forced to go to the courts because, in my opinion, if we can get these cases through summary judgment and into discovery, where we can start learning more about what people knew and when, then it might wake up the American public. If the American public wakes up and puts pressure on the politicians, maybe they’ll move quicker.

That’s my hope. But my goal, you know, our goal in suing people isn’t the lawsuit. I don’t think we’re going to take down PREP Act immunity. I’m pretty realistic about that. But our real goal is compensation reform and getting it moving so these people can get some relief.

Mr. Jekielek:
Joel, any final thoughts as we finish up?

Dr. Wallskog:
I’m excited to tell you about a medical clinic that we’re starting in Fort Worth, Texas this year. This is a separate project outside of React19. It’s really a collaboration between people with Covid shot injuries as well as long Covid. We support people with long Covid, and also national providers that we trust. It’s a brand new idea, which is for all of us to collaborate together to make a new multi-specialty clinic to treat complex chronic illnesses like long Covid and Covid shot injuries.

We have a very generous donor, but it’s going to be a non-profit organization. We’re going to staff this with providers we trust. We’re going to be involved in research, because we do believe that the research into our injuries is incredibly important to get better diagnoses, better diagnostic testing, and better treatment. We’re super excited about that now in 2024.

Mr. Jekielek:
In effect, you will be developing part of this parallel medical system that the FLCCC is seeking to push forward.

Dr. Wallskog:
Yes. Dr. Paul Marick will be the lead of our medical advisory board, and will create our protocols. We’re all here on the same side. The FLCCC and React19 are here to work together to provide better care for these people. React19 is an advocacy organization, but we’re a very proactive advocacy organization. One of the key elements of our organization is action. We’re not just here to tell our sad stories.

Sometimes we do, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t even like telling my story. What I want is action to help these people. Often we will say, “We’re here to take our negative reactions and turn them into positive actions.” That is the path to healing. These people need hope and support, and that’s what we’re about.

Mr. Jekielek:
Dr. Joel Wallskog, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Dr. Wallskog:
It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Dr. Joel Wallskog and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This article has been edited for clarity and brevity.