People who have been harmed by COVID-19 shots have suffered a range of medical issues — everything from death and permanent disability to pericarditis, nerve damage and overwhelming fatigue. While their symptoms vary, they share several common themes:
Abandonment — Those injured by COVID-19 jabs have been largely abandoned by the mainstream medical community and government.
Shame — Those who spoke out about their injuries have been shamed, ridiculed and labeled unethical; their medical issues have been politicized, while society provides no empathy.
Hopelessness — With no programs in place to help those injured by COVID-19 shots, and many doctors afraid to even acknowledge the shot’s connection to patients’ symptoms, many of those harmed feel lost and don’t know where to turn for help.
Bringing attention to the issue — and to the people whose lives have changed drastically since receiving a COVID-19 shot — is the first step to recovery. The film “Anecdotals” does just that, providing a glimpse into the lives of people who have suffered significant adverse reactions from COVID-19 shots.1
Many of them have been told their stories don’t matter. After all, they’re just anecdotes. But as you’ll see in the film, their journeys need to be heard, not only so they can access much-needed medical care but also so society becomes aware of the real risks of COVID-19 shots that have been covered up and censored.
Secrets From the Trials
One case involves Maddie de Garay, who was a healthy 12-year-old when she signed up for Pfizer’s COVID-19 trial for 12- to 15-year-olds. She suffered a severe systemic adverse reaction to her second dose of the shot, however, and struggled through 11 ER visits and four hospital admissions in the year and a half that followed.
Injuries from the shot have left her unable to walk or eat — she receives her nutrition via a feeding tube — and suffering from constant pain, vision problems, tinnitus, allergic reactions and lack of neck control.2
As though the physical trauma weren’t enough, Maddie and her family were continually dismissed by the medical professionals put in place to help, ignored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and denied the care needed to help Maddie. But the first red flag, Maddie’s mother Stephanie said at a hearing, was the way the trial was set up in the first place.3
Participants were given access to the TrialMax app to record side effects, like a swollen arm, but de Garay was surprised at the format it used. There wasn’t space for open-ended comments, only direct questions with “yes” or “no” options for answers, or check boxes to signify a set of predetermined potential effects.4 She explained:5
“I just want to give everybody a little better idea of what happened in our trial, because I did not know when you enter the trial, everybody uses a trial app. The app only allows you to record solicited adverse events — fever, redness, mild, moderate.
There’s no free form to fill in any other reaction that you have. What you have to do, if you have any other type of adverse event, is you have to call this study doctor. This leaves a lot of room for human error and concern of reporting bias coming from the principal investigator.”
In Pfizer’s April 2021 disclosure of Maddie’s case to the FDA, it’s stated only that she had abdominal pain:6
“One participant experienced an SAE [serious adverse event] reported as generalized neuralgia, and also reported 3 concurrent non-serious AEs (abdominal pain, abscess, gastritis) and 1 concurrent SAE (constipation) within the same week. The participant was eventually diagnosed with functional abdominal pain. The event was reported as ongoing at the time of the cutoff date.”
Then, a day before Pfizer submitted their request for emergency approval of the COVID-19 shot for 12- to 15-year-olds to the FDA, they added functional neurological disorder as a diagnosis in Maddie’s chart.7 Her mother noted in the film:8
“By the data cut off for the trial, Maddie experienced over 35 adverse events. None of these were mentioned … Maddie was in the hospital when the EUA [emergency use authorization] was approved. I thought that Maddie would be in the best hands possible in the rare chance she has a severe reaction. That was not the case. They did everything in their power to hide everything. Neither Pfizer, the FDA or the CDC has ever talked to us.”
Pfizer Trial ‘Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’
While health agencies continue to assure the public that COVID-19 shots are safe, those working closely on the trials had a different take. “I was working on Pfizer’s trial,” Brooke Jackson, a regional director formerly employed by Pfizer subcontractor Ventavia Research Group, which was testing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, said in the film.9 “What I saw was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
She witnessed falsified data, unblinded patients, inadequately trained vaccinators and lack of proper follow-up on adverse events that were reported. After notifying Ventavia about her concerns repeatedly, she made a complaint to the FDA directly — and was fired the same day.10 In her words:11
“The speed in which they were enrolling in the study — four to five coordinators pushing through 40, 50, 60 patients a day. We were not storing the vaccine at its appropriate temperature, the failures in reporting serious adverse events. We had so many reports of adverse events … we just could not keep up. The study doctor signed a physical exam when he wasn’t even in clinic.
Then Ventavia had unblinded every patient that was randomized in the trial. When we brought it to their attention, that’s what we were instructed to do — remove the evidence and destroy it. Emails about mislabeled blood specimens per Pfizer’s protocol, we should have immediately stopped enrolling, but they never told Pfizer.
I would bring the concerns to my managers and it was, ‘We’re understaffed.’ The FDA, they only see what Pfizer gives them. So I was documenting all of this. And on the 25th of September, I went directly to the FDA, and about six and a half hours later, I lost my job. I was fired.”
The FDA and Pfizer attempted to hide the COVID-19 shot clinical trial data for 75 years, but the FDA was ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to release redacted versions of trial documents on a much faster schedule. As part of the court order, 80,000 pages of documents related to the FDA’s approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 shots were released June 1, 2022.12
Among those documents were case report forms (CRFs) revealing that deaths and severe adverse events took place during Phase 3 trials, but, as reported by Children’s Health Defense, Pfizer had “a trend of classifying almost all adverse events — and in particular severe adverse events (SAEs) — as being ‘not related’ to the vaccine.”13 Journalist Naomi Wolf explained:14
“We’ve got these amazing 2,500 volunteers — highly credentialed medical researchers, doctors and nurses — pouring over these 55,000 documents that a court order forced Pfizer and the FDA to release.
Well, they’re finding that there were horrible harms — deaths, spontaneous abortions, neurological problems, fainting, heart damage, debilitating muscle pain, debilitating joint pain — that were concealed by Pfizer and the FDA from the American people.”
Adverse Reactions — Real, Not Rare
The film details adverse reactions that have stolen careers, independence and the ability to function normally in daily life from countless people. Dr. Joel Wallskog, a former orthopedic surgeon, shared his story after getting the shot:15
“My life has dramatically changed after this adverse reaction. My career of 19 years, that I took almost 14 years to train for, is likely over. I’m just not safe to work as an orthopedic surgeon. Assuming the FDA and the CDC would be alarmed at my diagnosis, I expected to be contacted soon after my VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] submission. No phone call, no contact.”
Kellai Rodriguez also detailed her struggles since receiving a COVID-19 shot:16
“I lost my ability to speak naturally. I have become unable to walk without a walker, and never know if or when the tremors will come or go. I can no longer cook, clean or even pick up and hold my baby for too long, before my body begins to shake uncontrollably or is thrown into excruciating amounts of pain.
I’ve seen countless ER doctors as well as two neurologists who have given me no diagnosis, no further testing besides regular bloodwork, CT scans, ECGs, EKGs and an MRI, all of which the doctors told me came back normal.”
At a rally for those injured by the shots, hundreds came together to share their experiences, with striking similarities. Many suffered from tremors that left them unable to walk, with onsets within days of receiving the shots. In the hospital, nurses shared that other patients were experiencing similar symptoms, but doctors refused to label the conditions shot-related. Jennifer Bridges, a former nurse with Houston Methodist Hospital, who was fired for not getting the shot, explained:17
“I’ve seen emails, where hospitals threatened their doctors — you cannot sign medical exemptions, you cannot talk about, you cannot report adverse reactions to these vaccines. And if somebody was actually brave enough to do that in writing, there were other people higher up to erase those. I have the proof, and I have the people that have shown me these things.”
Stories Censored and Silenced
Those injured by the shots were left abandoned during shot mandates. The film’s director, Jennifer Sharp, is among those who suffered from debilitating symptoms after the shot, including facial numbness, electric shock-like feelings and muscle weakness. She opted to not get a second dose of the shot after experiencing the serious adverse events after the first dose, and lost her job as a result:18
“In January 2022, I lost a job because I wasn’t vaccinated. I had a VAX card showing one shot, I had a blood test showing that I still had antibodies and a doctor’s exemption. And I was willing to get tested every day. They didn’t care. I couldn’t go to restaurants, gyms, malls, events.
So when the anti-mandate rally came to Los Angeles, I attended it to represent those of us who were suddenly societal outcasts just for doing what the government asked us to do. Even if you fundamentally disagree with someone else’s stance, does that justify the lack of compassion for them losing their livelihoods?”
Yet, when those affected tried to speak out about their experiences, they were silenced and shunned. One woman who was injured by the shots shared:19
“We are being so censored that we can’t get the message out that we’re even being censored, because if it’s through social media, they are one of the platforms that is censoring us. And even if it’s not outwardly, we’re being shadow banned …
So you could share something, but nobody acknowledges it. And you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’m isolated, I’m alone,’ but they’re probably not seeing it. It’s been moved to the bottom of the timeline or it’s not in existence. You literally cannot post on social media about having a vaccine reaction without it being censored.”
When Sharp decided to film “Anecdotals,” she made a pitch video that she shared privately on the platform Vimeo. It described her reaction to the shot and the need for compassion. “It was removed for misinformation. They said they don’t allow content that goes against the CDC recommendations. I am not allowed to tell my own story,” she said.20
Suicides Due to COVID-19 Shot Reactions
Brianne Dressen, cofounder of React10, a nonprofit offering financial and other support to those suffering from long-term adverse events from COVID-19 shots, detailed several suicides among victims suffering from electric shocks, neuropathy, tinnitus, tremors and other effects from the shots. She also considered suicide due to adverse effects she suffered after participating in the AstraZeneca trial:21
“I don’t think people realize how debilitating the symptoms are. My husband couldn’t leave me alone for months. He’d leave the house and he didn’t know if he was going to come home to a wife that was alive. He was afraid, every moment of every day, and it seeps into our kids’ lives.
Six months, I was not mom, I was not a human. I was just going to drive down to the lake. And I was going to carbon monoxide my car. And I was gonna put AstraZeneca did this on a sign in the window. And I was too sick to do it. So only reason I’m alive is because I was too sick to do it. And I would like to finish with a letter from a friend, Bree:
‘I cannot take this any longer. This has taken everything away from me, my career, my family, my life, my body will not stop attacking itself. And this is beyond the worst amount of torture. Please accept my apologies. I must bid farewell to this world. Please make sure the world knows the cruelty that has been imposed upon us. Goodbye, my dear friend, I will see you on the flip side.’
Rochelle Walensky. Janet Woodcock, Peter Marks, Anthony Fauci, you erased her and the many others like her, their blood is on your hands. You cannot bring my friends back. But you can save others from their fate. If you finally just tell the truth.”
The film calls for an open dialogue and a movement from humanity to ask the difficult questions and acknowledge those who are suffering due to COVID-19 shots. “We must be seen, believed and helped,” Sharp said. “Our stories are anecdotal, but in a situation where the science is changing, the studies are flawed and political agendas regulate, anecdotes could quite possibly be the most reliable data that we have. Yes, we are anecdotal. And these are our stories.”22
