The #CanWeTalkAboutIt campaign is a global effort to break the silence around injuries from the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I am extremely grateful that doctors and medical institutions are now willing to talk about adverse reactions. [They] should have been listening to the injured. We even have many injured medical professionals among the injured who have had trouble being heard.”Science reported that in addition to abnormal blood clotting and heart inflammation, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give rise to “another apparent complication”:
“[This] debilitating suite of symptoms that resembles Long Covid, has been more elusive, its link to vaccination unclear and its diagnostic features ill-defined.
The symptoms can begin to appear within hours or weeks after vaccination and are difficult to study, the authors of the article said.
“Science Magazine is speaking to an audience that the rest of us who have been pigeonholed into this corner can’t speak to because they don’t even know we exist. We’ve all been censored to no end. So how are we going to reach those people?
“They’ve been hammered over and over again in outlets like Science Magazine—which is kind of ironic—with the idea that the vaccines are wonderful and there’s no possible way that anything bad can happen …
Vaccine-Related Autoimmune Disorders Are Underreported
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were attempting to study and treat patients with Long Vax symptoms in 2021. They published a preprint report on their work, but the study was abruptly halted without explanation and the NIH has stonewalled attempts to discover details about what the agency knew early on.Scientists Hesitantly Speak Out
“You see one or two patients and you wonder if it’s a coincidence,” Anne Louise Oaklander, M.D. Ph.D., a neurologist and researcher at Harvard Medical School, told Science. “But by the time you’ve seen 10, 20,” she continued, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”The article also reports that “regulators in the US and Europe say they have not found a connection between COVID-19 vaccines and small fiber neuropathy or POTS.”
Marks told Science he worried “the sensational headline” about vaccine side effects could “mislead” the public. And several other researchers quoted in the article also expressed concern that their research could “undermine trust in COVID-19 vaccines.”
Dressen said researchers are hesitant to speak out because it carries great risk.
“There is not a single person, whether they are new to the game or whether they’ve been in this for decades, there’s not a single person that when they do step across that line and they do speak out, that they don’t get punished,” Dressen said.
The Power of Patient Advocacy
Dressen also told The Defender that doctors and researchers are finally speaking out because of the work being done by vaccine-injured patients.“The interesting thing about these researchers though,” she said, “is that they too had to be deprogrammed. And that happened because of … the patients [who] ended up in their offices,” she said.
“The majority of the advocacy that happened to get these researchers to where they were willing to speak out, it happened on the ground floor with their own patients. So, you know, that’s the power that the patients have.”
“The best advice and support I have had about my reactions have come directly from other injured. They have been a lifeline for me. I knew to ask for a skin punch biopsy only because other injured people had told me to based on my symptoms.
“Even knowing what to ask for, the first neurologist wanted to wait and run other tests because he said small fiber neuropathy doesn’t normally present the way I was presenting. I told him we are in unchartered [sic] waters learning as we go, so please run the test.
Immune Overreaction to Spike Protein
The article hypothesizes that the Long Vax symptoms might be caused by an immune overreaction to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Science wrote:“One theory is that after vaccination some people generate another round of antibodies targeting the first. Those antibodies could function somewhat like spike itself: Spike targets a cell surface protein called the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor, enabling the virus to enter cells.”Bernhard Schieffer, M.D, Ph.D., a cardiologist at the University of Marburg, is also quoted:
“The rogue antibodies might also bind to ACE2, which helps regulate blood pressure and heart rate. … If those antibodies disrupt ACE2 signaling, that could cause the racing heart rates and blood pressure swings seen in POTS.
‘Needless Gaslighting’ Has to End
Vaccine-injured advocates say that much more research into these types of adverse events is imperative.“This is just one of the many injuries and many side effects that they write about in this article. There’s so much more work to be done in the area, so much more attention to be given to a lot of people who are suffering today,” Wilson said.
Newell said that when vaccine-injured can get access to early treatments, they are more likely to recover.
“But, that requires acknowledgment,” she said, adding, “Just like Guillain-Barré [syndrome] is recognized as a vaccine reaction, we need small fiber neuropathy and POTS to be recognized as well.”
“Had there been a medical and financial safety net along with processes to accurately research the injured and adequately support us, we would be much farther along than we are and so many wouldn’t have had to needlessly be gaslit at the doctor’s office with all of these new symptoms.
“I wish those of us who were not using the medical system prior to our Covid vaccines and were now suddenly showing up with debilitating and scary symptoms would have been at the very least researched.
“We needed acknowledgment even though our truths are uncomfortable. It has been a painful and lonely ride that I would not wish on anyone. We need to be able to talk openly about reactions because what doesn’t get talked about leads to shame and isolation. Isolation can lead to suicide. We have seen far too many injured take their lives.
React19 also plans to distribute small grants for studying immunology, biomarkers, and other features of post-vaccine illness. “Even modest support matters,” Krumholz told Science, because “it’s incumbent on us to produce preliminary data” to win over funders with deep pockets.
“The deep-pocketed funders of Covid vaccines had no problem pouring billions into them without any preliminary data—but helping their victims is not one of their financial priorities,” Chudov commented.
He added, “Thus, the researchers helping the vaccine-injured operate with tens of thousands of dollars, while Pfizer shareholders enjoy their multi-billion windfall.”
She said public health agencies should be responsible for creating better systems to track injuries and should be funding research to understand and treat them and stop them from happening again.
“We are in a very bad situation because the governments are not taking responsibility for this. This research needs to be funded,” she said.