The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC,
finally has released some long-awaited hidden reports.
The reports reveal the facial paralysis and other adverse events
that followed COVID-19 vaccination.
There were 780,000 adverse event reports from people
shortly after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out.
The report showed that people experienced a wide range of post-vaccination problems.
These included heart inflammation, miscarriages, and seizures.
The reports, which were from 523,000 people,
also included hundreds of reports of facial paralysis
and thousands of reports of tinnitus.
Multiple people said that things were so bad
that they struggled with suicidal thoughts.
People reported these side effects to V-safe.
V-safe is a text messaging system
that was created by the CDC
in order to monitor COVID-19 vaccine side effects.
The CDC, for years, declined to make V-safe data public.
Instead, the CDC published studies describing the reports
as providing reassurance about vaccine safety.
Yet, data from a lawsuit that was released in 2022
showed that nearly 8% of the 10 million people
who used the app to respond needed medical attention
or hospital care after vaccination.
Many others were missing from school, work, or other normal activities.
This top-line data came from check-the-box surveys.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kaczmarek
ordered the CDC to disclose free text responses.
From a different survey section in January,
Judge Kaczmarek dismissed the government's arguments.
The government previously argued that processing the responses
and redacting sensitive information would require too much work.
But Judge Kaczmarek's order came in litigation
that was brought by the Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice.
Another lawsuit was also filed.
The second lawsuit over V-safe data
came from the Informed Consent Action Network.
After reviewing the new data, Barbara Lowe Fisher,
the co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center,
noted that the lawsuit was necessary to obtain the V-safe data.
She said it is yet another shameful chapter
in the decades-long history of federal health officials
trying to cover up vaccine risks
by ignoring patterns of vaccine reaction symptoms
in reports made to the government.
Elizabeth Brehm, an attorney representing
the Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice,
said that they are now seeking the dates
for the CDC reports since they were not included.
They know that the CDC received these entries
from the people who experienced adverse events
after receiving COVID-19 vaccines.
V-safe was launched just as the vaccines were rolled out in late 2020.