THE VILLAGES, Fla.—They were coerced into getting COVID-19 vaccinations to keep their jobs. Now, vaccine-injured health care workers are speaking out, sharing their stories of frustration and anger over having their afflictions denied and being attacked for demanding acknowledgment and compensation.
It was standing room only at the Jan. 26 press conference, held at the Waterfront Inn at Sumter Landing in The Villages in Florida. Before Dr. Marivic Villa shared stories of the “alarming increase” in vaccine injuries among her elderly patients, three health care workers shared their stories of being injured by the COVID-19 vaccines.
While the elderly were among the first groups targeted to receive the vaccines, health care workers were forced to get COVID-19 vaccines to keep their jobs.
‘Agonizing Pain’
Danielle Baker was a registered nurse and a certified palliative hospice caregiver in Ohio. Her 20-year career ended after she was forced to get the COVID-19 vaccination to keep her job.
With the aid of a rollator walker, Ms. Baker made her way to the podium. Her voice, labored and shaky, was barely above a whisper.
She read the speech she delivered during her testimony before the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccines and related biological products meeting, relaying how she “reluctantly received the Pfizer injections” after “being coerced” by her former employer in June of 2021.
Within 12 hours of receiving her second injection, she collapsed, and 24 hours later, she was in the emergency room.
“Agonizing pain” radiated from her injected arm to her face.
“By the end of July I was hospitalized, unable to walk,” she added. “Muscle spasms were contorting my body. I was in excruciating, constant pain. My immune system attacked my spinal cord, and I was diagnosed with transverse myelitis.”
“We are now in financial ruin because I ironically took these shots to keep the career I no longer have,” she said tearfully.
In a follow-up interview with The Epoch Times on Jan. 29, Ms. Baker said staff were informed that they had until July 2021 to get vaccinated if they wanted to retain all of their COVID-related health care benefits. No exemptions were allowed. Then the mandates came.
“I felt like I was cornered. I had no options,” she said. “In 2023 I was diagnosed with diastolic heart failure, which they relate to the shot. I also learned it’s attacking my lungs, so my lungs are failing. The working theory is that the shot caused an immune reaction that’s causing my body to attack itself.”
To help cover her medical expenses she set up a Give-Send-Go account.
“It’s heartbreaking. I didn’t want the vaccination,” she said. “It was brought to market way too fast, and they started by targeting the elderly and health care workers. It has put us in financial distress and they’re not doing anything for us.
“We’re not being studied or researched to find out how things could be turned around. We’re just getting sicker and our bodies are falling apart. It’s inhumane.”
‘You Get Attacked’
Michelle Utter is a health care professional. Due to legal matters associated with her ongoing worker’s compensation case, she is unable to disclose her position or employer.
“I am Pfizer vaccine injured,” she said at the press conference. “I’ve been injured since January 11, 2021.”
Within 40 minutes of receiving the injection, she said, “It automatically felt like I was on fire inside.”
Her mother had to come get her and take her home. She thought she could sleep it off but when she woke up her whole body was in pain and “was on fire worse than the day before.”
She was unable to move her legs or arms. Weeks went by before she was able to get to a doctor. Her symptoms were dismissed as a “pre-existing condition.”
She now has chronic inflammatory demyelinating neuropathy, a slow-developing autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the myelin, which insulates and protects the body’s nerves.
“When you start telling your story you get attacked,” she added. “They do that to shut you up so nobody learns the truth. Then I started hearing about all these seniors in the world’s largest retirement community. How can anybody deny this reality?”
In a follow-up interview, Ms. Utter told The Epoch Times that she suffers from tinnitus, tremors, fatigue, and brain fog. Most recently, she found out she has micro-clotting, a condition known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a very rare side effect contracted after vaccination against COVID-19.
She is now dependent on monthly intravenous immunoglobulin infusion treatments, a process that takes six hours.
“Most of us turn in our claims when we’re injured to the CICP, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, but 98 percent of our claims are denied,” she told The Epoch Times.
“Mine has been in there since October of 2021 and it’s still in review. It didn’t go into review until March of 2023, and I still have no word. They only pay what we paid out above insurance. It’s a broken system. The problem with the COVID-19 vaccine injured is that we’re not acknowledged, and we need to be put on the VICP.”
The government’s Health Resources and Services Administration says the VICP, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, “is a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury petitions.”
However, it does not cover COVID-19 vaccine injuries. Those with “claims associated with the COVID-19 vaccine or other COVID-19 related countermeasures” are advised to “file your request for benefits with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program.”
“Without it, we’re not going to get any compensation. The PREP Act needs to be repealed,” she added.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) authorizes the secretary of the HHS to “issue a PREP Act declaration,” which provides immunity for itself against liability for claims “resulting from the administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats, and conditions.”
It also protects “entities and individuals involved in the development, manufacture, testing, distribution, administration, and use of such countermeasures.”
‘Full Cytokine Storm’
Lyndsey House was a registered nurse in North Carolina who worked in the ER, critical care, and oncology. While she had been scheduled to speak at the press conference, she was too ill to travel and instead appeared in a short video.
On Jan. 30, she spoke with The Epoch Times by phone. She explained how she was injured by a Pfizer booster she received on December 29, 2021.
Prior to that, she was a healthy, physically active 36-year-old whose only ailment was a pollen allergy.
While she had received two Moderna injections before that, the reactions were mild and went away within 24 hours. Eight hours after receiving the Pfizer booster she began to develop flu-like symptoms, which also went away.
Ten days later, everything changed.
“I was in full cytokine storm,” she said.
Cytokine storm, a condition acknowledged by the National Institutes of Health to be associated with COVID-19 vaccines, occurs when the body’s immune system produces too many inflammatory signals, which can lead to organ failure and death.
She also developed postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, inappropriate sinus tachycardia, peripheral neuropathy, and tinnitus.
While most vaccine injuries are internal, the change in Ms. House’s physical appearance was dramatic.
She lost all of her hair, and her body was covered with painful shingles lesions.
“One of the most exciting things I’m doing is I am going to be one of the people tested for DNA integration,” she said.
As described in a paper written by the Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, and published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, DNA integration is “a process of inserting a foreign DNA segment into a host genome.”
“They’re going to sequence my genes to see if the plasma DNA found in the vials integrated into my DNA and is what is causing my injuries,” she said.
Asked why there is so little research being done on vaccine injuries, she said the effort to hide the data “is intentional.”
“There was no regulatory oversight whatsoever during this whole process,” she said. “It’s insane how much we don’t know and how much they’ve hidden from us. But they can’t hide this much longer. There are too many of us.”
Few Studies, Little Data
According to an Oct. 20, 2021, Congressional Research Service Legal Sidebar, the CICP “is the exclusive remedy for claims within the PREP Act’s scope, including injuries resulting from COVID-19 vaccinations,” adding that the “VICP may eventually apply to COVID-19 vaccine injuries after the public health emergency terminates, contingent on certain statutory and regulatory changes.”
HHS announced the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency on March 9, 2023.
In November 2023, Bloomberg reported that a lawsuit was filed with the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, alleging that HHS’ CICP is unconstitutional, and deprives them of their constitutional rights of due process and a jury trial.
Of the 12,233 COVID-19 claims filed with the CICP, over 9,000 allege COVID-19 vaccine injuries or deaths. Of those, only 32 claims have been deemed eligible for compensation and only six of those resulted in actual compensation. The overwhelming majority—1,235 cases—were denied, mostly because they missed a filing deadline.
According to the most recent VICP data (pdf) on vaccine injury claims filed with HHS from October 1988 to January 2024, statistics for COVID-19 vaccines are not included.
There are few studies or reports reflecting data on adverse events suffered by elderly COVID-19 vaccine recipients.
A study, published in the JAMA Network on Aug. 2, 2023, advised that “Head-to-head safety comparisons of the mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 are needed for decision making” regarding the “comparative risks of potential adverse events following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination among older US adults.”
“However,” it states further, “current evidence generalizes poorly to older adults, lacks sufficient adjustment, and inadequately captures events shortly after vaccination. Additionally, no studies to date have explored potential variation in comparative vaccine safety across subgroups with frailty or an increased risk of adverse events, information that would be useful for tailoring clinical decisions.”