I Was Injured in the COVID Vaccine Trials and Still Struggle Every Day: Brianne Dressen

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “When I got my COVID vaccine, my reaction started within an hour, and it started with tingling down the same arm as my injection. It moved to my other arm, then it moved to my legs, and then it moved to my head, into my brain, and I had this horrific electrical, pulsating sensation through my body 24/7.”

Brianne Dressen was left severely injured after participating in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trials. She’s the co-founder of the nonprofit React19, which helps people impacted by COVID-19 vaccine injuries. React19 now advocates on behalf of over 36,000 people.

“We can’t be found in any kind of database that the public or anyone beyond the government can access,” she says. “All of the programs that we’ve developed, they work together in concert to build an avenue for healing for the people that literally have no avenue.”

She’s the subject of the new book “Worth a Shot?: Secrets of the Clinical Trial Participant Who Inspired a Global Movement.”

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

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Brianne Dressen, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Brianne Dressen:
I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:
You were injured in a Covid vaccine trial some four years ago. You were diagnosed with post-vaccine neuropathy at the National Institutes of Health, NIH, and you were actually treated there and it helped you. You described this to me as getting the golden ticket. Where do things stand now?

Ms. Dressen:
That’s a good question. I was at the NIH back in 2021, so almost four years ago. And a lot has happened in that amount of time, but also nothing has happened at the same time. struggling every day with this autoimmune condition that continues to eat away at my nerves. And at the same time, I’ve been able to find a whole lot of things that have helped my condition as well.

Mr. Jekielek:
Reading your book, one thing that jumped out at me is diet. Your husband, who’s been incredibly helpful to you, describes a situation where he started trying diet as a possible option, and that was one of the first things that made a significant difference.

Ms. Dressen:
It was a happy accident because at that point I was really not in a good situation. My cognitive abilities were at the lowest they had ever been. I was almost entirely bed bound at this point. And we were five, six months into this. We had tried all kinds of medications the doctors had given us. You know, we took a picture of it one day and it was literally an entire desk full from edge to edge of just prescription medications that I had taken and failed.
My husband said I’m going to do some research on looking at foods and neuroinflammation and systemic inflammation and curbing autoimmunity. And sure enough, food was one of those things. So we cut out gluten, dairy, and corn. Next thing to go was processed anything. So anything that came in a box or a bag, that all went. So everything was homemade and organic and clean.

It was incredible just in my body with the amount of electrical sensations, vibrations, pain, brain fog. My personality was not my own at that point because the inflammation was so bad. So I started changing my diet. You know, my husband was feeding me everything at this point. And all of a sudden, my sense of self returned, my personality returned. And the pain went from a 9 out of 10, down to a 7 out of 10, down to a 6 out of 10, then down to a 5 out of 10.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us about this collection of symptoms, and these are not exclusive to you.

Ms. Dressen:
When I got my Covid vaccine my reaction started within an hour. It started with tingling down the same arm as my injection, and moved to my other arm, then it moved to my legs, then it moved to my head into my brain. I have this horrific electrical, pulsating sensation through my body 24/7.
There was no break from it. I still have that to this day, but instead of unbearable, we’ve been able to dial it back with different therapies. I also have extreme leg weakness.

At the beginning, I had incontinence and dizzy spells. I passed out multiple times. The first time ever in my life that I passed out was after vaccination. And extreme brain fog, confusion, disassociation, and depression. So it was just an onslaught of constant discomfort 24/7.

There was no way to get it to stop. The doctors didn’t know what to do with it. So they just drugged me up with all kinds of medications that are supposed to help nerve pain. But really all it did was to make me into a zombie. I didn’t feel the nerve pain, but I also couldn’t feel anything else, right? I didn’t even know I was in a room sitting up or if I was in bed laying down. It was not a good way to exist.

Mr. Jekielek:
This is certainly not what you expected. Tell us how you came to be enrolled in this trial.

Ms. Dressen:
At the beginning of the pandemic, we were watching the mainstream media and we were very concerned about the alarming rates of deaths and hospitalizations and hospitals being overwhelmed. And it was humbling enough for me to see that type of devastation that I really wanted to be part of the solution because our country was hurting so bad at that point, right? There was chaos everywhere.

I started collecting masks for the local hospitals. I had several friends and family members that were working in the hospitals and they were telling us that they were not being provided the equipment that they needed to be able to do their jobs appropriately and safely. So we started collecting masks and just started sharing with my community, hey, if anyone has any N95 masks in their garage, let me know. I’ll come pick them up.

It turned into a whole operation where we ended up collecting over 1,100 masks. We had to smuggle them into the hospitals. This was my first indicator that there was weird bureaucratic stuff going on. So the hospitals didn’t want the N95s. They wanted to make sure that they had full control over what was coming in that their employees were using.

Even though we had clean, packaged, well cared for protection for their employees, they didn’t want it. So we were meeting the nurses in the parking lots and the doctors in the parking lots, and they would smuggle them into the hospital inventory. They were all extremely grateful to know that someone was watching out for them while they were watching out for the rest, according to the media. Phase two, it was the same thing.

Then here we were in phase three. The media was saying it’s time for us to just increase the numbers just enough so we can get these clinical trials done. Then we’ll be able to end the pandemic by stopping the spread of Covid through these vaccines. That sounded like an incredible thing to participate in. I’d never had any previous problem with any vaccine before in my life. I was fully vaccinated, it was just no big deal. That all changed with this one dose of the Covid vaccine.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please chart for us the process of finding these dietary changes, getting diagnosed and treated by NIH, up until today.

Ms. Dressen:
After my injury, the drug company was gone. We called them multiple times. We cried out for help in emails and phone calls, literally with tears running down my face, begging for them to help, which is what they should have been doing according to our contract. The contract that the drug company signed with me states that they will help me physically, medically and financially if there was a research-related injury, and they did neither.
At this point, I was holed up in my room in the dark, just writhing in pain and just trying to survive. And of course, my husband was not appreciating what he was seeing in the mainstream media on the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Mr. Jekielek:
One of your symptoms was having difficulty with any kind of stimulus, even being touched.

Ms. Dressen:
Yes. If you can imagine being at a sporting event and someone blows a bull horn right next to your ear, you have that physical recoil where your body just ignites and your entire body wants to move away. My body was doing that with the sound of running water, the sound of my husband’s pants swishing as he walked, and the dog panting. These strange higher-pitched frequencies were absolutely unbearable, so my children couldn’t be around me. There were multiple times where I pushed my children away during that time because of horrific physical response. My teeth were so sensitive, I couldn’t brush them.

With all of the sensory overload, I was isolated. I was on my own. It was like solitary confinement. There was no entertainment, nothing to break it, break free from it. So my husband reports my injury to the National Institutes of Health, and that was January 11, 2021. So if you think about January 2021, the vast majority of America still had yet to even be able to have the opportunity to get their first dose.

January 11th, 2021, is when the NIH started a study on neurological complications to the Covid vaccines. They were already receiving reports from Moderna, Pfizer, and J&J people that were injured with the same cascade of symptoms that I was experiencing. Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J people that were injured with the same cascade of symptoms that I was already experiencing. That’s when an official government body really started investigating this.

Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J started flying out vaccine injured people to collect their samples and figure out what exactly is going on in their bodies. But then they also went a step further to give diagnoses. I was diagnosed with post-vaccine neuropathy and therapies and they tracked how we were progressing with these therapies that they had given us over several weeks. So that was a span of from January to August. So it was a longer process with them.

But in the meantime, my doctors at home were not cooperating with the NIH. They were not following the NIH’s instructions. They were typical corporate health care systems where vaccine injuries are not a real thing. If they were a real thing, they would have, you know, been disclosed by the drug companies because they’re required by law to disclose the side effects of their products to the public and to the medical community. So it was two very different sides to the same coin. We experienced a lot of panic at the beginning. I remember telling my husband, please just tell me that this is going to go away, this is going to get better. He kept repeating back to me, yes, there’s no way a vaccine can do this, so yes, this is going to get better. It’s going to be okay.

I had that desperation of just needing to get my life back and my health back and some kind of relief from the pain. That turned into a loss and a substantial loss. And with that went a will to live and hope. But we were able to work through that and through a lot of work to pull out of it. But on the other side of that was very simple things like food, diet modification, cleaning up the water that we drink, spiritual alignment, and mental and emotional regulation.

Mr. Jekielek:
There is a chapter in your book titled, The Darkness, where you considered suicide. Your experience with overcoming suicidal thoughts might be applicable beyond Covid injury.

Ms. Dressen:
It’s obvious that with even the thought of checking out and ending your life, there is so much shame that comes with that. Because of the extreme shame with it, people are walking around all the time with this going on that they’re struggling with, and they don’t say a word, right? And in our communities, it’s usually the ones that are the quietest that slip away and go through with it.

And it’s through this experience that I learned that the most important thing that we can do with anyone that’s struggling with that level of loneliness, that level of despair, where that darkness does consume them to the point where they just need a break and they are considering that way out, is to remove that shame, that criticism, that, you know, so we can open up the doors so people can talk about it. They can explore it. They can find those supportive networks that are available to help them through it.

For me, it was probably some of the hardest work I’ve ever done emotionally, mentally, ever in my entire life was getting out of that place. Because at that point, I’d been suffering for several months. I hadn’t been able to sleep at all because the discomfort was so bad. The only thing I could control was my own breathing. But this is something else that I felt that I could control, right? I could control, you know, finishing my own existence. That was the only other thing I could control, right? And just being able to have a break, which is what most people need.

They just need a break from the pain, emotionally or physically, that they’re experiencing. There’s a certain element of at least my journey through this where my sense of identity as a preschool teacher was gone, right? Before this, I was a mom that was active in my community and organizing all these different events for my kids and the other kids in our community. We had this beautiful, typical, thriving, happy American life, and it was beautiful.

Then within a matter of months, it had transformed into this profound level of pain and suffering that was shrouded in an illness that was so politically charged that this topic was never going to see the light of day. That’s where I was, and there was no end to the suffering. There was no break and who I was was completely gone.

I allowed that to consume me with the pain to the point where it just needed to be done and facing that is harder than running from it. And death is actually another way of running from problems. Turning around my emotions mentally and just turning around to face that reality of my new existence was the hardest thing I ever did.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us about your husband finding these letters that you had written to your family.

Ms. Dressen:
Obviously, I have kids that I love more than life itself. When things were at their worst, I wrote them these letters and looking back on it now, now that I have my thinking, my brain has clicked back into place and I’m no longer dealing with the brain fog. The letters were so incoherent. They, I can’t believe that I almost left that as like a final testament to my kids because they were so poorly written. It was very obvious that someone very, very ill had written them. I had written to them and my husband. He was at this point in a constant crisis phase and trying to keep the family together. He was literally trying to keep the kids alive, because there was no longer their mom taking care of them all the time.

He was trying to keep his job and then he was also trying to keep me alive and um and so he found these and um for him it was like this deep sense of like hurt and betrayal that I had even gone there and he was so angry it was the first time in our marriage I had ever seen him so just like deeply hurt and and angry I think it hurt him you know more than anyone else obviously but also through that experience he he really redoubled his efforts to make sure that he’s like no I have to save my wife I have to make sure that this that somehow this is resolved I can’t lose her I can’t lose my family.

Mr. Jekielek:
Going back to diet, it was the diet that helped you think clearly again. Please explain that for us.

Ms. Dressen:
My own concept of that is that it was a chemical response going on in the body, so my brain was not right. It was very obvious that it was chemical. Until the inflammation came down in the brain, nothing was going to help. There was no amount of like a therapy session that was going to do anything until this chemical response was brought down.

Getting rid of wheat was the first thing. And who knows if it’s the glyphosate or just the fact that wheat is pretty darn inflammatory. But just dialing that back just a little bit, all of a sudden I was able to see beyond just my own suffering. And one of the first things that came out of it for me was this just sense of clarity of, oh, my gosh, I almost walked out on my family. I almost destroyed my family for life.

And then I had to deal with that shame. I can’t believe that that was me, that I, their number one protector almost did that. But we have had people in the groups that have ended their lives. It’s really through that process that we’ve learned a lot more about ourselves when that happens. We’ve learned that it’s just the permanence of death. Because when you’re in that situation, you don’t really think about that part of it. You don’t think about the family members that are going to be left behind.

You don’t realize that the people that you’ve connected with, even just online, that are dealing with the same issue, how this is going to impact them, because you’re just thinking about just needing it to be done. But I remember that when the food started clearing things up mentally. I also was doing a lot of hard mental work with acceptance and acceptance therapy. This is something that I really try to get others in my situation to start thinking about.

Because once again, it’s the same thing. Instead of running from your problem, it’s so hard to turn to face it. The only way through it is to look at it and face it head-on for exactly what it is, for how hard it is, and to start working through every one of the aspects of it that are just literally challenging to live with on a daily basis.

Mr. Jekielek:
People can be faced with someone in their family contemplating suicide, and who is in a very dark place. You often don’t know what to do in these situations. Maybe you could get them off the feel-good, highly processed foods. Perhaps that little bit could help somebody and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to get off of that processed stuff.

Ms. Dressen:
Yes, absolutely. It’s a good step one because doing research on neuroinflammation, which is actually the foundation for depression, there’s a lot of stuff physiologically that’s going on. People that are depressed, it’s not just in your head. There’s a lot that goes into it. Food, medications, do it all the time, right? I know that you’ve talked with Kim Witzak on this topic.

There’s so much that our society is doing that contributes to this crisis,
where people are not able to experience joy in a natural way, in a format that is going to feed those parts of the brain that help them feel purpose, that help them feel a sense of love and life and have them look forward to the next day. We’ve got to get back to that.

We’ve really learned through different surveys that we’ve done. We always wanted to figure out, you know, what would drive people to do this? What are the specific elements there that would cause people to reach out for these very desperate final, you know, methods, as you would say. We’ve asked them, what are some of the things that would help you the most mentally and emotionally? Number one is a supportive family. A very, very close number two is a supportive community. Even without an illness, those are two things that in society right now are completely fractured, and they’re not headed in a direction that’s good for anyone.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us how React19 was formed and where you are today.

Ms. Dressen:
React19 was created because the government wasn’t doing its job. And because they weren’t going to do it, we had to. So a bunch of us that are injured by the Covid vaccines got together and started a 501c3 nonprofit. And our goals are pretty simple. We are dedicated to providing physical, emotional, and financial support to people that are harmed by the Covid vaccines, which right now we represent over 36,000 people in the United States alone. And we have a partnership with over 20 other countries with other organizations that are founded by the injured for the injured, just like we are.

The federal compensation programs globally are broken and people can’t get disability for an illness that still is not acknowledged. There’s not even a diagnosis code for it. Yes, the organization has been a lifeline for people. It’s been such a gift to see how this community has not survived this illness, but in some sense has also thrived and gained a voice and a sense of not community, but a place in this world. The organization has been one of the vehicles for that.

Mr. Jekielek:
You support people who are dealing with the aftereffects of the injury.

Ms. Dressen:
Yes, that’s our main goal. With the study at the NIH that we were in, nobody knows about that study. Nobody knows about the therapies that they were doing on us, but we do. So what better way for us to help others than to give that information to other people exactly like us that could benefit from that information.

So we have some of the secrets at the NIH that we can share. We have financial resources that we can provide for people that are in need. There’s an underground network of providers that are doctors that will acknowledge vaccine injury and help these people, which believe it or not, there’s a huge crisis in corporate health care right now where these doctors are not allowed to write down vaccine injury in people’s charts. How are you going to treat something if you can’t even look at what could be causing it, right? So it’s been an incredible amount of work, but it’s also been an incredible gift to be able to do this.

For example, there’s a child that was injured. She was a healthy kid, a totally typical eight-year-old kid. She ended up in a wheelchair in diapers. Her parents, desperate trying to help her, took her to a major hospital system in the state. They locked her up and they put her in the psych ward. This kid was in the psych ward for a long time, and of course, because they were treating her as a psych patient, her condition continued to get worse.

Her family found and worked with Stephanie and Maddie de Garay and they worked with our provider network, our underground network of providers. The mom broke her kid out of the psych ward, took her to a doctor on our network three states away and through the care fund which is the compensation program that we independently run, she was able to fund getting her daughter the therapy that she needed. She walked into school that fall as if nothing had happened to her.

So all of the programs that we’ve developed, they work together in concert to build an avenue for healing for the people that literally have no avenue. There’s nothing for them. And the government has actually made a pretty good effort, effective effort, at making sure that any avenue that we have has been blocked. So the programs are essential.

Joel Wallskog, who’s my co-founder at React19, an injured orthopedist, says it all the time. He says, “We have a five-year plan to not exist in five years, because if we will have succeeded at the work that we want to do. The government will be doing all of this themselves appropriately.” We want nothing more than for React19 not to be needed and to not exist. Hopefully, at some point, we’ll be able to achieve that goal.

Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned Maddie de Garay, who you talk about in your book. She is a teenager that volunteered for a Covid vaccine trial and was injured and has been through all sorts of tribulations, and not as recovered as this other young woman that you’re describing. Please tell us about Maddie’s case and where she is at today.

Ms. Dressen:
Maddie is an incredible kid, the most vibrant, sassy, hilarious kid I’ve ever met. She talks with my kids and their little friends. But she was full of life. She was doing cartwheels, backsprings, playing basketball, soccer, and doing the TikTok dance videos that all the kids do. And she was in the clinical trial with Pfizer.

Now, four years later, she is still in a wheelchair. She has a permanent feeding tube installed in her stomach now. And she has been through a horrific experience of not being recorded appropriately by the clinical trial company. She was inappropriately investigated by the FDA. She was not cared for after her injury by the drug company or the hospital that was running the clinical trial. In fact, she was gaslit, you know, abandoned, abused.

The NIH came in and provided some guidance to her doctors as well, which her doctors, just like mine, ignored the instructions from the NIH and gaslit her anyway. She has a litany of well-documented medical records that show very clearly that there is something physiologically wrong with her body and nobody would take her seriously for years. She finally was able to get access to IVIG, in part because of React19 support. That finally took the numbness and weakness from her body that was progressing. It progressed all the way up to her belly.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is IVIG?

Ms. Dressen:
IVIG is an immunodeficiency treatment product, a biologic. Basically, it’s 1,000 to 10,000 people’s immune cells in an IV bag, and they infuse it into your veins to correct your own immune systems malfunctioning. Her issue is similar to mine and several others where the immune system is just misfiring all the time and it’s attacking her nerves. When it attacks your nerves, your nerves are everywhere in your body. It’s not just the sensation of skin burning or a cold sensation. The nerves are also in your heart. They make your heartbeat correctly. They make your digestive system function and process food correctly. Nerves are also all over your brain.

If these nerves are not functioning healthy and correctly, you’re going to have problems all over your body, which is why these vaccine injuries and long Covid are systemic and it’s a body-wide problem. It’s so hard for people to grasp what’s going on in their own body, because stuff is firing off everywhere. It doesn’t make any sense. All of a sudden your GI tract literally turns off. All of a sudden you can’t swallow, but then also your heart rate will just be going up. All of a sudden you’re passing out for no reason. This happens all at the same time. Then you have tinnitus or pins and pricks all over your body.

So this 12-year-old-girl was dealing with that level of problems. She was having multiple seizures for a long time. She couldn’t see correctly. They left her for dead. The drug companies did, and the government did. And her mom did everything, everything she could to try to heal her kid.

The only people that would help were people like you and me that were willing to sit down and listen to her. Four years later, this kid is still in a wheelchair and she’s still fighting like hell to get her body back and to recover some functioning of life. Right now, she’s working in physical therapy for hours every single day, just trying to get her feet to move, her toes to move, and her knees to move.

Mr. Jekielek:
There is so much positivity coming from this young person who is suffering so much.

Ms. Dressen:
She’s really just an incredible example to everyone in our community on just what resilience looks like and what happens when you keep your eyes on the path forward, instead of what’s behind you or what’s currently with you. She’s always working to get her life back. It has been an incredible gift to witness that firsthand.

Mr. Jekielek:
On one hand, you were diagnosed by the National Institutes of Health. On the other hand, they give guidance even, and some doctors just won’t accept that guidance, because you would think that that would be exactly the type of guidance they would accept. The second part is that to this day there’s no diagnosis code. Please explain that for us.

Ms. Dressen:
It’s a classic example of what happens when corporate interests overtake common sense. The diagnosis codes are very simple billing codes that doctors use to bill for insurance. What’s important about these is they can track heart attacks, they can track cancers. It’s all kinds of things that they can track through this system based on these codes. It’s very convenient that there is no Covid vaccine injury diagnosis code, because then you can’t actually query in the system to find a rate of incidence to figure out what other comorbidities there may be with these people that have a vaccine injury.

Mr. Jekielek:
And just to be clear, this isn’t like every, this is, you know, relatively not a common thing, but it’s just a very, but it’s a very real thing. And this is, I think this is difficult for people to understand. Like it’s not, doesn’t, the same thing doesn’t happen to everybody.

Ms. Dressen:
Yes. In the surveys that we’ve done, people report 20 symptoms on average, it’s body wide. But we do have an incredible health system that can track that information and help delineate symptom clusters. So then we can maybe figure out what therapies are working for what types of injuries people have. But we’re not tracking that because we’re not generating the data in the first place.

But the data collection databases are all in full control of the federal government. Whoever is controlling the federal government is controlling that data, right. Over the last four years, they have not been transparent at all with the VAERS information, and the V-safe information like ICANN.

Mr. Jekielek:
ICAN is tracking the injuries, right?

Ms. Dressen:
Yes, exactly. ICAN is an incredible non-profit law firm that has been on the forefront of trying to access that information from the federal government. They’ve sued multiple times to get information from the VAERS system, which is tracking the vaccine injuries and the V-safe data, which was also tracking the vaccine injury data. If you go on their website, ICanDecide.org, they have an incredible database that has opened up access to this information to the public, but they had to sue repeatedly to get that information.

Now, we’re just beginning to unpack what the federal government had as far as the information related to the COVID vaccine injuries. In lieu of that, the billing codes that are controlled by CMS, that’s a database that medical providers and medical researchers can access. And that’s the database that we don’t exist in. So we can’t be found in any kind of database that the public or anyone beyond the government can access, which I think is a very concerning problem.

Mr. Jekielek:
It sounds like you may have a wishlist for the new HHS and the sub-agencies, NIH and FDA.

Ms. Dressen:
Yes, but I’m just guessing at it. The to-do list is very long. We’ve unearthed more problems than we can solve in the last four years. The problems that we had four years ago are still the same problems that we have today. So one, obviously, is the diagnosis codes, making sure that we have a reasonable way to monitor what’s going on with any pharmaceutical outside of the government system.

And we have compensation reform. That’s a big one. I don’t think people realize that when you’re harmed by a Covid vaccine, you can’t sue. You can’t sue anyone. There is no accountability coming, which is against everybody’s essential constitutional rights. If you have a problem with a peanut, like if you have a peanut allergy, you can say that you have a peanut allergy without, you know, people getting defensive, right?

If you say you have a vaccine injury, you’re met with a very emotional, confrontational response. That’s not because vaccine injury is alarming. It’s because people have been programmed to have that response to a vaccine injury, right? Instead of, oh, it’s like a peanut allergy. So you’re having a problem with this product. Okay, let’s make sure you don’t get that product anymore.

Instead, it’s like, you must be anti-vax. You must be anti-science. Actually, no, I was your game player. That’s why I got the vaccine and now I’m injured. But with how this is structured, we’re not allowed to be seen as just people with a medical condition. That’s all this is. This is just a medical condition. This is not a political stunt. This is literally just a physiological reaction to a new pharmaceutical product that, coincidentally, we can’t sue for. So all these products cause harm. All of them, right?

Mr. Jekielek:
At some rate.

Ms. Dressen:
Yes, every pharmaceutical causes harm. And for all pharmaceuticals other than vaccines, you can sue. You can hold the drug companies to account. This actually motivates drug companies to make safer products because they don’t want to get sued. That takes their profit margins way down.

But because the government has stepped in the middle between the consumer and the drug company and said, we’ll take care of the compensation piece. Drug companies, you make these products and then people, you take them, we’ll cover the people if there’s a problem. Now the drug companies are off the hook, right? There is no reason for them to make safer vaccines.

We all know about the massive amount of fines that the drug companies have paid over the years for corruption and fraud. I really don’t think that they’re going to do the right thing for the good of humanity. It’s definitely going to be profit first. We’ve seen this in the past with big tobacco, for example. The opioid crisis is a good recent example. Vioxx comes to mind.

These are all classic examples of the drug companies doing what they do best and making an insane amount of money in the process and really not wanting to pick up the collateral damage. What’s different about this is the
government has absolved them of any obligation to pick up and clean up any of the collateral damage.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about these nominations for positions in the health system; Bobby Kennedy Jr. for HHS secretary, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for the head of NIH, Dr. Marty Makary for the head of FDA. Some people describe them as disruptors that have a different view than past administrators of such agencies. What are your thoughts?

Ms. Dressen:
It’s interesting for me because before my vaccine injury, I thought that all these guys were crazy, right? Because the only information that I was getting about these people was really actually completely untrue information that I know now. But through my own process of my injury and understanding how politics works and seeing this firsthand, I’ve been in the room when the news happens, right? I’ve been in rooms where you’ve got a wall of cameras and you have media people with, you know, a dozen or two dozen media people all sitting there listening to the statements going on in the room. And then I’ve seen what they actually share with the public.

For the press conference that we did with Senator Ron Johnson in Wisconsin in June of 2021, and it was wall-to-wall cameras. There were even a couple of reporters that were crying as we all shared our stories for the first time. When the mainstream media came out with it, it was nothing about the injuries, nothing about the people harmed, and nothing about our tear-filled pleas for help. It was all about Senator Ron Johnson being a misinformation spreader. So now I see the game. I understand firsthand how it’s played, and I’ve seen it over and over.

Mr. Jekielek:
In your book there’s this moment where you’re suffering with your injury. You’re not even sure you want to talk about it too much, because that may prevent other people from believing in these life-saving therapies. How many people that are writing these different narratives from what he experienced might be having a similar thought.

Ms. Dressen:
Yes, and that’s the main reason why we put this book together. We wanted to provide a perspective for the people that were just like us or are just like how we were, you know, that they want to think and they believe it in their heart that society inherently is good, that the media inherently, there’s so many people that are working in media, there’s no way if there was this type of corruption going on, there would be people saying so, right? There is a belief that people are looking out for each other, that there would be a groundswell of outcry that would happen.

But what these people don’t understand is when the media has whistleblowers, they get shut down and fired and canceled, like just destroyed. When you have whistleblowers in the government, it’s the same thing, right? Whistleblowers in the drug companies, they are done, right? Like they’re destroyed.

Every time someone pops up their head to cry out and talk about the actual, you know, darker side of what’s really going on with this control of information, they get shot down and they’re deplatformed. When they’re deplatformed, then their voice is removed. That’s been one of the most dangerous parts about the lessons from the pandemic, that there’s still this process by which information is completely controlled that goes so against what we as Americans have been trained to understand about the flow of information in the United States, that people are completely blind to what the true issues are.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is going to happen now? There is now a new administration that the MAHA movement helped get into power. What are your expectations?

Ms. Dressen:
I think this is an incredible opportunity for an awakening. In many ways, I feel that the Trump administration really is our final chapter in stepping up and weeding out the corruption. I have an incredible amount of hope that through these next four years, we’re going to see some substantial change, in Kennedy’s words, with radical transparency, which is exactly what we need.

Mr. Jekielek:
You have very high expectations.

Ms. Dressen:
I do. At the same time, I understand that we’re probably not going to get everything that we need. But at the same time, I’m inspired by the fact that Trump, when that bullet grazed his ear, he stood up. He didn’t stay laying down. He stood up and faced the people that were there to support him. He told them to fight. At that moment, just like everybody else, I looked at this man and said, that’s a leader. That’s the guy that’s going to stand up against whoever is doing this to him and say, no, I’m ready to lead this country into a new age. If there’s anybody that can do it, it’s going to be him.

Mr. Jekielek:
What will people find in your book?

Ms. Dressen:
The book is a story of hope. It’s a story of love. It’s a story of resilience. Anybody can relate to it, because it talks a lot about loss and overcoming. In the Covid vaccine world, a lot of people that are injured by the Covid vaccines were hard blue, dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. A lot of our family members can’t understand how we went from this wild paradigm shift to seeing what we see now.

But this book actually walks people through that process. It’s not just for people that believe what we believe. We wrote it for people that don’t believe what we believe, so they can begin to understand the human cost of censorship, the human cost of drug companies being able to do what they want without consequences.

Mr. Jekielek:
You’ve been involved in a lawsuit with the Biden administration. What’s the situation with that now?

Ms. Dressen:
Obviously, during our vaccine injuries, we were crying out for help online. As soon as our voices gained momentum we started growing very viral on social media and speaking out on the mainstream media once they started picking it up. These briefings started popping up at the White House showing that we were gaining some momentum. Rob Flaherty, who worked at the White House with Biden, instructed social media companies to shut
us down.

So here we are. We’re suing them for violating our First Amendment rights. But we’re not doing it for ourselves. We’re doing it to make sure that anyone that is crying out for help online with a true story, through a true experience, true lived experience, will be able to do so without being censored.

Our support groups were also shut down, so that’s also a violation of First Amendment rights. So we’re doing this to protect freedom of speech and also our freedom to assemble for every American, not just people that are harmed. We filed a lawsuit with Ernest Ramirez, who lost his son due to myocarditis after Pfizer, Suzanna Newell, Shaun Barcavage, Nikki Holland, and Christy Dobbs. These are all injured people that were censored, their support groups were censored, and we’re going after the Biden administration for violating our First Amendment rights.

It’s currently sitting with the courts, and with the change of administration, we’ll see what the new administration decides to do with the case. We’re suing for $1, and this is how constitutional cases work. But we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to see some resolution on that.

Mr. Jekielek:
This has been an amazing update. Any final thoughts as we finish?

Ms. Dressen:
If people are struggling with their families not believing them, if people are struggling politically with their family members who are just abandoning them, if people are feeling alone, just remember that there is an incredible community that cares about you, that you really do matter, and the world needs you. There are resources at react19.org, where there are people that do value you and your voice.

Mr. Jekielek:
Brianne Dresden, it’s such a pleasure having you on the show.

Ms. Dressen:
Thanks for having me.