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

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

“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.

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%. The average payout is about $3,700. Dr. Joel Walskog is an orthopedic surgeon who found himself permanently disabled after getting the COVID-19 genetic vaccine. If you look, my report is still in VAERS. I'm listed as not serious. In this episode, he shares his personal story and what we know about those injured by the COVID vaccines. The neurological adverse events are very common and unfortunately not recognized.

And we dive into what the NIH actually knows about treating them, which was revealed in a suppressed preprint report. The FDA, the CDC, and NIH, I really think they think the American public is dumb. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Dr. Joel Walskog, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me. So let's start with, of course, COVID-19 vaccine injury. You, of course, work with numerous COVID vaccine injured people. You yourself are injured. I want to get a picture now as we speak of the range of injuries that you experience

or you have found in some of the 36,000 people that are part of React 19? Every COVID vaccine injured person is unique. There's not just one syndrome. It's really a constellation of different syndromes. And even according to our recent study, we did a survey of preliminary results of 850 people. The average number of symptoms these injured people are reporting is 43 in each person. So what we found is a lot of their syndromes can be kind of fall into three buckets. There's the anaphylaxis group. That's the people that get the shot and have an immediate severe allergic reaction. But that also includes the mass cell

disorder group. And then there's an autoimmune group. And then last, there's the inflammatory group. And that includes things like blood clotting disorders and the myocarditis. So there's really just a plethora of different syndromes out there and unfortunately, there's really no ongoing research into these injuries and therefore, we don't have great diagnoses. They're very vague. We don't have great diagnostics or testing and we don't really have specific treatments.

There are some people and I, FLCCC for example is developing treatment protocols but a lot of them are what I would call as empiric. Empiric means they're just trying things that make sense pathophysiologically or from a mechanism of action but they're they're kind of just empiric treatment, and we really need better defined diagnoses, more specific diagnostic testing, and more specific treatments. So let's talk about this preprint from 2022 published by NIH scientists. 23 people were flown out to NIH, assessed for COVID vaccine injury, and actually in many cases treated successfully. So there is some research being done.

Scant research, but I think that's an important study the public needs to know. So in 2021, this is early on, in 2021, several people were reporting that they had neurological adverse events. 23 people, 23 Americans, and Brianne Dressen, who is my co-chair at REACT-19, was one of those 23. 23 Americans, mostly women, were flown out to the NIH on the NIH's dime, housed there, studied. They admitted they all had neurological adverse events to the shots. Treatment protocols were made. And they actually then made a published, well, I shouldn't say published, but had a preprint article about the group, which out later in 2022 about a year later and what that preprint said is first of all times of

the essence the quicker you get to people the more likely treatments will be successful and they also talked about treatments that are available steroids if steroids don't work IVIG which is iv immune globulin but the problem is that information never got out to the healthcare system in general and and we have been actually through react the ones communicating these treatment protocols that were made by the NIH in 2021, never recognized by the FDA or CDC, and just left. So we are the ones that often talk to people, have you tried this, have you tried this,

and a lot of times, have you tried IVIG? And for certain people, the IVIG can be life changing. So we know that whatever protocols they used for some reason not detailed in this paper exactly, but we know that these things actually worked in at least some of these cases like Randressen's case. They know how it works. They know that they can treat it. A lot of the people got better.

I'm not saying, if you look at the preprint, it sounds like they're cured. And we know a lot of those. I think we know about 12 of the 23, I'm estimating. And they're not all cured. I mean, brand dress and still every other week gets IVIG. But without that knowledge that those select group received through the NIH, you know, they wouldn't have gotten any improvement. But think about how many, perhaps thousands of people, could benefit if that type of information was communicated from the NIH, was recognized by the FDA, was recognized by the CDC. Brianne and I have been on the phone on a Zoom call with Peter Marks, who is a head of biologics at the

FDA, and talk to him about this. Why don't you communicate this, Dr. Marks, this preprint information of this case series that was done by Dr. Arvind Nath, who is a very respected physician researcher at the NIH, but when we talk to Dr. Marks that just falls on deaf ears. So we know that there are people in these government agencies that know that COVID vaccine injury is actually a thing. They know how to treat at least some of the manifestations of it. We've had examples of that. There's even this preprint that we've just been discussing. But there is no communication about this broadly.

I mean, and one of the things that comes out in talking to COVID vaccine injured, as I have been on this show and just personally, is that most doctors just simply don't know to look for this as a possible cause of this constellation of symptoms that we've been discussing? Like, how do you square that? Well, this is complicated.

And again, I would start by saying that I saw some of the emails back and forth between Arvin Nath and Brianne and some other people, and I really think he wanted to help. And early on, they were very, we have to work on this. We want to get this out. We want to help people. And then there was kind of a sudden stop and a ghosting, which tells me that I think his intentions were good, but I think he had to get direction from elsewhere that kind of said, stop this. And remember, that's no different than some of the censorship direction that came directly from the White House, which said to social media companies, for example, stop, censor any narrative out there, even true vaccine injuries that might compromise the narrative that the COVID shots are the only way out of the pandemic.

So I think there's a lot of directed censorship, and sometimes I don't know where it comes from. So let's talk about your personal journey. You were, of course, COVID vaccine injured. You were a medical doctor in a very, very different field compared to what you're working on now. And you suffered a pretty serious vaccine injury. So first of all, I want to say that, you know, I'm I don't want anyone sympathy, you know, and I'm truly I've been very blessed throughout my whole life. And I don't do what I do now for myself.

You know, I, I feel so I feel blessed to help these people I frankly by forming rack 19 and being an advocate for all these injured people I certainly receive more than I ever give but I was a orthopedic surgeon board certified licensed the state of Texas and Wisconsin, and really had a great career. I was in practice for about 20 years. I had a very, what I would call, mature practice, meaning I just had to show up. I had a very large patient base, and I operated two days a week for about 12 14

hours per day and had a big team of people several you know PAs nurse practitioners and nurses and did clinic three days a week and just was on what I would say is the hamster wheel of life loved it you know married to my college sweetheart you know had four mostly wonderful children. I'm just kidding but four great kids. And really it was what I would say is just living a dream life. I mean I would say that everything I wanted to achieve I did. And it was great. But it all kind of came to a screeching halt, you know, in early 2021. I was the product of the health care system that I was a part of for decades.

At the same point, you know, the health care workers were what we call the 1A group, where we were getting the shots first. And literally, I remember the end of December, I got an email and said, you know, your number's up, come and get your shot. And literally I drove down to a hospital, got my shot over lunchtime, went back, went to work. And it was unremarkable. But about seven days later, I remember waking up from bed

and I said to my wife, I you know my feet are numb and I mean like pins and needles and it wasn't it was pretty dramatic and you know I I've had some neck problems in the past I thought maybe I had a created disc that was touched on my spinal cord and you know I knew I'd no thought about the shot whatsoever being related at that point so I called a friend of mine and they got an MRI of my neck because I figured maybe that's it. You know got that, nothing new. And then move forward I think I can't remember exactly say five to seven days later I

was sitting with a patient just sitting across just like talking to you in the clinic and I try to stand up and my legs would move and so I remember you know using my hands pushing off the the examining table that we weren't using but just pushing off the examination table and I fell backwards I just had no control of my legs it was at that point where I knew something serious and more ominous was going on. I mean, I clearly thought I had a brain tumor or spinal cord something, or something more serious.

So literally I remember being part of the health care system, I literally picked up the phone and called an MRI center where I worked and said I'm coming and got MRIs of my in the end brain and spinal cord and I ended up having a call a demyelinated lesion of my spinal cord at about the t8 or t9 or that thoracic t8 or t9 level and that's where I got a diagnosis of transverse myelitis. So I quickly saw a neurologist within two days. And we started going on high dose steroids and tried all these other things.

They ordered a bunch of other tests to rule out everything else, because I wanted to make sure I didn't have anything else. So looking for multiple sclerosis and all these other things, and everything else was negative except this lesion of my spinal cord. Again still I had never put two and two together about the shot even though my symptoms started I say I got kind of hit like a Mack truck within about seven

days I still didn't put the things together until I remember having the thought of remembering reading about the AstraZeneca trials of the COVID-19 shots in the UK. And I did read that those trials in the UK were delayed twice for just three cases of transverse myelitis. And that's when I started putting things together. And I was like, well well and I talked to my neurologist he basically said possibly you know you don't know but again he also told me and I want to quote him because this is a quote Joel I don't want to get involved in quote and that's kind of the attitude that a lot of the

injured people get is that the providers do not want to be involved because they don't want to get attacked by saying anything is potentially related to the vaccine. I reported as soon as I got that diagnosis of transverse myelitis, I reported my injury to VAERS, which is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. And because of the UK trial, the AstraZeneca trial that got delayed twice for just three cases of transverse myelitis, I thought this was big. And really, I reported it through VAERS, and I literally, in my naive world, thought someone from the CDC would be contacting me like that day. Days passed.

Weeks passed. Nothing. And I was like, I was really thinking about the general public. I was like, holy crap. You know, all these, the UK thing was so serious that they stopped the trial twice for these three cases. Why aren't they calling me? So then finally after about three to four weeks I called the CDC. I talked to someone, a physician from the CDC, and they

said they'd get back to me. I had to fill out another report or two and she said again transverse myelitis was a diagnosis of interest to them and then nothing happened. And really to this day I've had no further interaction from them no follow-up if you look my report is still in VAERS I'm listed as not serious okay and I asked her about that and and she said by federal law to be called serious in VAERS, you either have to die or be hospitalized. Well, my neurologist did recommend I get hospitalized, but I don't really like being in hospitals, especially as a patient. And I said, listen, I mean, at that point, I mean, I'm potentially lifelong disabled.

How can this be not serious? And she said, well, that's the law. And I said, well well that's a law and I said well that's crazy and so to this day I mean again that's how I'm listed in VAERS as transverse myelitis with you know being non serious even though at this point I'm permanently disabled I've lost my career which is okay I mean, it certainly took a while for me to be okay with it, but it's a crazy system. So you're making me think, frankly, a little bit of my own personal story of ending up here in this chair. You know, at one point I was in a career in biology and I ended up with Guillain-Barre syndrome, which destroyed my career and put me on this path that led me to the Epoch Times ultimately. journey to be doing this, having someone like you advocating for COVID vaccine injured people

is, I'd call it a huge blessing to them. So it's just, it's interesting how life works, right? Well, it's a blessing to me. I mean, really, I truly believe, I mean, again, my entire life was everything I wanted, everything I tried to achieve, I did. Now, this is something that was completely out of my control. But again, 2021 was a struggle 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 of React 19. And, you know, so 2021 was a year where I felt, you know, like people look at you like early on, too. They look at you like you're

crazy. I mean, if you said I had an adverse event to the shot, you're nuts or you have an anxiety problem, which I don't. But, I mean, you really feel like the one word that describes for me 2021 was abandoned. You're kind of out on an island and you think that you're alone and there's no one else like you. And you literally are kind of shunned. I mean, all my—you can tell when people look at you. You can tell when you try to talk to providers when they roll their eyes or, you know, all the little ways that we get gaslit. But for me, when I went out to D.C., we had that press conference with Senator Johnson. For me, it was transformational. You know, seeing that I

wasn't alone, seeing how much these other people were struggling and, you know, again, I'm very fortunate in life. I've been blessed my whole life. So I left there and I remember getting in the Uber, going back to the airport, and I called my wife and I said, you know, I know what I have to do. And that's really the start of really React 19. I mean, I have to say Brianne Dressen is really the founder of React 19. And React 19 existed even before, you know, November of 2021. And she ran it as kind of a support group at a website. But we really wanted, we agreed,

and all of the people that were out in DC agreed that they wanted to make it a real organization. So we formed a Wisconsin based corporation. It's like a startup company. You know, we made bylaws, we elected officers, and we applied for our 501 status, which we got. And 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. Not because we tried. I mean, it's not like we advertised. They just kept coming and they still keep coming. So one of the statistics we put in the Unseen Crisis film, which of course we made about the COVID vaccine injured and their stories that Brianne Dressen stars in, is we've made a comparison of how much money was given out from the existing compensation programs and from REACT-19, which indeed has made a point of helping COVID vaccine injured basically recover or helping them fund their recovery. I'm wondering if you could actually update those numbers for me. Yeah, so these people are financially,

physically, and emotionally abandoned. But when we start just talking about how financially, I mean a lot of these people can't work, they're disabled, you know, go through, you know, Social Security disability, people get rejected, it takes a year or two to get a response. So these people are really, many of them are truly financially devastated. So because of the PrEP Act, we can't sue. So the PrEP Act, so the government or the HHS secretary back in 2020 declared a public health emergency. And when there's a public health

emergency, the PREP Act is activated. Let me say it that way. The PREP Act gives blanket immunity to pharma, to the government, to our health care organizations, to healthcare providers. So they're completely immune, so we can't sue them. And all of the normal FDA regulatory rules and processes are thrown out the window, right? Because a normal vaccine takes oftentimes five to ten years to get approved. So the public health emergency, all the FDA regulations and norms go out the window. There is a compensation program that's existed for decades

called the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. It is a real program with real money. I think it has like $4 billion in it right now, and it's pharma funded. So every time a vaccine dose is made or sold, pharma has to pay an excise tax, say 75 cents to this fund, okay? And if your child gets injured, let's say for a vaccine that's on a childhood schedule,

you can basically apply to go to the VICP program, which is kind of like a court. It has judges and you know the rules, right? It's a real program. Remember, the COVID shots weren't vaccines. They were considered countermeasures because of public health emergency. So we have to apply to the countermeasures injury compensation program, or the CICP. That program is a dismal failure. So right now the Department of Health and Human Services or HHS is sitting on over I think it's over 12,000 claims by Americans injured by the COVID shots. They have a

denial rate of 98 percent and these numbers are from January 1st reported on the CDC's website. January 1st of 2024, they have a 98% denial rate. The average payout is about $3,700. Remember these are some people that have been decimated by the vaccine and get $3,700. Now, React 19, we raise the number one thing we raised for is our CARE fund. Our CARE fund is a program that pays injured Americans financial grants for up to $10,000 for uncovered medical expenses. I'm very proud of what we've done. We've paid out well over three quarters of a million dollars through very grassroots

fundraising. The average donation we receive is about $80. We have zero corporate funding. Believe me, I've tried. I've reached out to some people, you know, big-name celebrity people you think might be successful, you think might be helpful, without success. So these are just grassroots fundraising that's helped us raise that money. Now, so the grants that we've given out are over three quarters of a million dollars.

I think we've given out to about 107 people. Now, that's a drop in the bucket. So it's heartbreaking. When we give out the money, I mean, these people absolutely need it somewhere, living in their cars. I see their financial, I look at every application. I see their bank accounts. You know it's heartbreaking. It's like saving zero,

retirement zero, checking three hundred dollars. It's heartbreaking. So you say you give a maximum of ten thousand dollars per person. If I understand that correctly. Yeah so what we do to be fair is they have to wait at least a year in between, you know, reapplying for the grant program. But again, I admit, I mean, you know, this is a drop in the bucket. The problem out there

needs millions, maybe even billions of dollars to help these people. Right? And I truly believe it should be pharma funded. That's why our organization supports, we demand actually, legislation where the CICP claims are transferred to the VICP with what we call retroactivity. Which means that for those injured already in the last three years, they can still either apply to the VICP or if they apply to the CICP and got denied, they can then apply to the VICP. So for the benefit of anyone who wants to reach out to REACT-19 in the first place or possibly believes they could benefit from the CARE Fund or maybe even donate to the CARE Fund

or contribute to it in some other way, how do they reach you? The best way to reach us is through our website. So it's www.react19.org. That's by far the best way. And if anyone wants to donate, you can also donate through our website. I mean, we are really desperate for donations. It's rough and these people need help. And I promise to all of your viewers that what we do is, we are a 100% volunteer organization.

Brianne and I take, none of us take a dollar, a cent from the organization so the other way people can get donate if they wish is they can text the word react re a CT to the number five zero one five five but there are ways through our website to if people are just looking to try to apply for the care fund there are avenues through there to to apply and if anyone has any specific questions about the CARE Fund, they should email carefund at react19.org. So I remember a presentation that you did about a year ago where you talked about how something like 80% of the injuries

that you had seen at that time were neurological. Typically, in the, let's say, in the broader narrative or the legacy media, you're hearing more about myocarditis signal, right? Or that's what you hear about. Yeah, my feeling is, yeah, overall with the covid shot injuries about 80 percent of people's adverse events include some component of our neurological component so and again there's been a lot of focus on myocarditis but in our most recent survey of the people that were that were injured that reported to our that responded to our survey only about 5% were diagnosed

with myocarditis so for us you know we're trying to get out there the communication that you know that the neurological adverse events are very common and unfortunately not recognized well now that's not to say that the myocarditis isn't significant and a lot of the people that have myocarditis isn't significant. And a lot of the people that have myocarditis are, you know, young, healthy, often young, healthy males who really didn't need a shot anyway. So it's certainly a tragedy. And most recently, what Epoch Times had reported was there were communications in governmental agencies that in 2021 that they should alert the public that there is a safety signal for myocarditis. And unfortunately, they, in their communications, opted not to send out the communication. And that was 2021.

You know, that's almost three years ago. And that's a tragedy. I mean, they openly decided to censor that information. It's a trail of censorship to try to censor anything that's against the narrative that the COVID shots were the only way out of this pandemic. And it robs the American public of informed consent. And informed consent is very important. You know, as a physician, I mean, we have to tell patients risks, benefits, and options, okay? You

know, what's the risk of COVID to a 16 year old male? Not much. Infection fatality rate or IFRs is zero. What are the benefits? Okay. But what are the options to have they had COVID? Natural immunity. None of those conversations really ever occurred. But to give the American public informed consent, you have to trust them. You have to give them information. But I truly believe the FDA, the CDC, and NIH, I really think they think the American public is dumb, which is not true. I mean, if you give people information, they can make their own choices. And again, we're in America where you should have individual liberty and be able to make those choices.

But by robbing us of that information, of robbing us of that safety signal information in 2021, it's wrong. It's unethical. It's immoral. Yeah, and I mean, informed consent, in my view, is really kind of a foundational principle of medicine. Absolutely. And it's, a lot of people think it's, oh, you sign a form.

Okay. Informed consent is not the form. The form is just recognition that a conversation occurred about the risks, benefits, and alternatives of the proposed intervention. And now you have the FDA who is recognizing that there's growing hesitancy, not just to the COVID-19 shots, but growing hesitancy to the broader vaccine schedule surprise surprise the american public is starting to get it okay safe and effective prevents infection prevents transmission

people are starting to kind of figure it out even anthony fauci recently said that that six foot rule just kind of came out of thin air. So a lot of things happened that they said were all science-based, but people are starting to get, okay, everything we're told wasn't necessarily true, and people are waking up. How do we know that? Look at the uptake of the current boosters. According to the FDA, it's dismal. And Peter Marks just wrote a viewpoint in online Journal of American

Medical Association and he said his vaccine hesitancy kind of, and I'm paraphrasing, at a turning point. Meaning, is the American public now with growing hesitancy towards the COVID shots, is this going to transfer over to hesitancy from to overall the overall vaccine schedule? Absolutely, right? Because people are losing, the American public is losing trust, okay, in our federal regulatory agencies. The FDA's mission, their 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 does that they spend hundreds of millions of dollars. That's not their job. They're not there to promote these countermeasures. Again, not really COVID shots were a countermeasure. They're there to protect us. And they're 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 health care community

and pharmacists need to be better at messaging. Messaging. The problem isn't messaging. The problem is trust of the American public, which they're losing. And he fails to understand how himself, 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. So what is your advice from your standpoint to the CDC, to the FDA, to the NIH about what to do now given everything that we've seen?

Number 1, eliminate conflicts of interest. Okay? Again, everybody knows that anybody good at the CDC or FDA that's very pro-pharma ends up getting a board of director or a big job at pharma when they leave. next stop direct marketing pharma marketing to consumers we did it with cigarettes okay we stopped it but the problem is is they shouldn't in my opinion pharma shouldn't directly advertise to consumers because they're they're driving their products and in the average American consumer doesn't

know enough but that patient then goes to the doctor and says I want this stop that direct to consumer marketing and if I might jump in before you do your third point there's also this effect. I mean, these are huge amounts of money that we've seen being channeled into media companies from Big Pharma to do this marketing. And I mean, I think it also potentially creates another conflict of interest where, you know,

are you really going to report on, you know, some of these serious issues we've been talking today if you're getting 50% of your billion dollar revenue from companies that wouldn't like you reporting? Absolutely. Remember, pharma money goes to media companies and if they obviously are supportive of the pharma

companies are more likely to get more ads but that pharma money goes to our scientific journals if people think today that our scientific journals aren't corrupted by pharma money I mean pharma money feeds right into those scientific journals feeds right into researchers right if you're gonna do research and continually do research that shows bad results with a company's product and they're the funder of the study, well you're not going to get business.

And don't forget too, pharma money has infiltrated our political system. So that pharma money is everywhere. And I do think that's a big problem. But getting back to what else I would tell, what else I would recommend, one of the big things that regulatory agencies need to do is go back to science. True and transparent science. Show data.

Show the data. Okay. 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. Pharma owns it. That's why they didn't want to release it for 75 years. Okay. So get the data out there. Show things, good and bad. And again, in science, you make a hypothesis, you test it. It may work out for you. You may get results that you expect. You may get results that you don't expect. But that's science.

And 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. It's okay to be wrong. But to not admit you're wrong when you're wrong, I think is evil. And I think that's really where they failed. I mean, again, you remember when Fauci said, I am science. I mean, what?

It's an insult to the American public. Science isn an absolute. And people do make mistakes, but they need to be truthful. Get true and transparent data, and they need to regain the trust of the American people. You know, it strikes me that this transparency, for me, I think one of the most valuable things would be a kind of radical transparency around data because that would show goodwill.

If we couldn't figure it out ourselves or we weren't willing to, at least we can give it to allow. And there's frankly an incredible sort of flourishing of people who have expertise and numbers from other areas who have started tackling what scant data is available, making fascinating discoveries out of that data, like actually proving themselves to be apparently much more curious than the people that are supposed to be doing the work in the first place.

My point is there's actually an ecosystem ready, I feel, to handle this data and deal with it, you know, ethically and also, you know, rigorously. Right? So, I mean, it would be, I think it would be very valuable. And I think we would learn some things very quickly. Absolutely. Science should be reproducible. So if you're able to say, okay, I've figured out this solution, true science is reproducible. You should have someone else look at

that same information and say, yes, I verify it works. And part of science is reproducibility. But they have hidden so much of this data. And then again, as you know, most of this data has come out just through Freedom of Information Act releases, court dealings where basically organizations or law firms are suing to get data released, which is a tragedy. Which if you're continually hiding things, what does that say? You know, and that's why I get very suspicious that there's always more going on. So you know, so one of the, I want to cover very briefly what legislation you're involved in

and also what the status of some of these lawsuits that REACT-19 is involved in. So we've been fairly active in Washington, D.C., particularly at the federal level, really working towards compensation reform. As we've talked about, the current compensation program for the COVID shot injuries is the CICP, which is really a dismal, dismal failure. So in the last two years, we have been out to D.C. numerous times, meeting with politicians, independents, Republicans, Democrats. Our call is completely non-political or non-partisan, let me put it that way. They all agree that the CICP has failed.

The problem is there's been little action in DC. However, I do want to say that there are two House bills that are floating around called House Bill 51, 42, and 43, which have to do with modernizing the VICP and transferring the CICP claims with retroactivity over to the VICP. And we support that legislation. Now, it's far from getting just as a proposed bill to something that also, there's no companion bill yet or something similar in the senate and it's certainly not on the president's desk for signature and it really is kind of stalled which is frustrating so one thing we're doing which is we are going to have the first ever

coveted vaccine shot lobbyist at dc about four months. So we raised some money and it's Kyle Warner, who is a ex-professional, I don't know, actually, I think he's still a professional mountain bike rider, who is a great guy. I call him cool, calm, and collected. He's perfect to represent us. And he's going to go out to DC and lobby for us full-time for four months. And I've just seen that, you know, 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, and 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

because we need to get this legislation going we need to get these people compensation and again not $3,700 for getting myocarditis real compensation okay like that people that people do receive in the VICP and again I don't want the taxpayers on the dole, or on the have to pay the bill like they do in the CICP. I want Pharma to fund it. And that's what happens at the VICP, which is Pharma funds that program. And 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 that I recall.

So it's good legislation that's ready to go, it's just not going anywhere. So as we get frustrated, okay, so for me, I see this as an urgent need. These people need money, okay, that are injured to put food in the table, to put clothes in their kids' backs, you know, to pay their mortgage now, okay? And it's been frustrating. And again, when I'm out there in D.C., they don't feel that urgency. So that's why we've gotten involved in some litigation. So, React 19 and six individual injured people have filed suit last October, so October of 2023, against HHS, which is Health and Human Services, HRSA, for basically infringement on a, because the CICP is such a dismal failure, it infringes

on our fifth and seventh constitutional rights, our fifth and seventh amendment of the Constitution. So fifth is the right of due process, the seventh amendment has to do with the right to a jury trial. Well, we are denied those rights through the CICP. There's no jury. We submit an application, like I did, for example, I think in May of 2021. It goes into this black hole, as Aaron Seary describes. 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% denial rate. It took me 18 months to get a denial. Just like 98% of the people were all getting denied. So then I appealed. And I submitted one of Arvin Nass' papers that talks about transverse myelitis as being recognized after the COVID shots. I said, how can you deny transverse myelitis isn't related? I was totally healthy until 70 days after the shot.

So I appealed. That appeal was 14 months ago. 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. So as we wait for legislative reform and compensation, we're really 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, I think it might wake the American public up. And 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. But our real goal is compensation reform. And getting it moving. Getting it moving so these people can get some relief. Well, Joe, any final thoughts as we finish? Well, I'm excited to tell you a little bit about a clinic,

a medical clinic that we're trying to start in Fort Worth, Texas this year. So this is a separate project outside REACT. It's really a collaboration between people with COVID shot injuries as well as Long COVID. We support people with Long COVID too and 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 lung COVID and COVID shot injuries. We have a very generous donor, but it's going to be a nonprofit organization. We're going to staff this with providers we trust.

We're going to be involved. We're going to be involved in research because we do believe that the research here into our injuries is incredibly important to get better diagnoses better diagnostic testing and better treatment so we're super excited about that here in 2024. and you know perhaps you'll be i mean in effect you'll be developing part of this, you know, parallel medical system that the FLCCC, you know, is seeking to kind of, you know, spearhead or push forward. Yeah, I mean, we are, Paul Merrick is going to be the lead of our medical advisory board creating our protocols. So we're all here on the same side. We are about, you know, FLCCC and React 19, we are here to work together to provide better care for these people. So, again, React 19, you know, we are an advocacy organization, but we're a very proactive advocacy organization.

You know, one of the key, I think, elements of our organization is action. You know, we're not just here to tell our sad stories. I mean, sometimes we do, okay? But the truth of the matter is, I don't even like telling my story. What I want is action. I want action to help these people. And oftentimes we'll say, we're here to take our negative reactions and turn it into positive actions. That's a path to healing. These people need hope and support. And that's what we're about. Well, Dr. Joel Walskog, it's such a pleasure to have you on. It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining Dr. Joel Walskog and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kellek.