By BROOKE CONRAD | The National Desk
WASHINGTON (TND) — Steve Wenger says he began struggling to walk in May 2021, seven days after receiving the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
He eventually became paralyzed from the waist down and had to go to the hospital. His arms became so weak he couldn’t pick up a glass of water. In clinical notes, his doctor at Mayo Clinic referred to an autoimmune disorder called chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP) saying it was “triggered by COVID vaccination.”
It’s almost impossible to sue a vaccine company for a COVID vaccine injury, due to liability protections under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP Act. Congress deemed these protections necessary years ago in order to “ensure that potentially life-saving countermeasures will be efficiently developed, deployed, and administered,” according to the Congressional Research Service.
Instead of filing a lawsuit, people injured by a COVID vaccine can seek government compensation through the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, or CICP. Wenger says he filed his claim in October 2021. A year and a half later, he’s still waiting to hear back about whether he’s eligible.
Wenger isn’t alone in the waiting process. His claim is one of more than 8,000 others alleging injury or death from the COVID-19 vaccine. Zero such claims have been compensated as of March 1. Twenty-one have been determined eligible for compensation, but not paid. Three hundred have been denied as of March 29.
Wenger says he believes his claim should be an “absolute slam dunk approval,” based on the government’s own data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is monitoring post-vaccination reports of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), a neurological disorder that sometimes causes paralysis and experts believe is related to CIDP. One recent analysis of government data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association identified 295 reports of GBS following COVID vaccination and concluded the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was associated with an increased risk of GBS.
Wenger is able to walk again today – albeit with pain and only for short distances. Compounding his health problems are his concerns about how to pay for them. Wenger says he couldn’t work all of 2021 and received Social Security disability benefits starting in January 2022. He receives regular treatment for his injury – IVIg infusions every two weeks and Rituximab every six months. In October, he told The National Desk he believes his medical expenses and lost wages so far add up to somewhere between $150,000 to $200,000. He says his father has helped him pay for ongoing treatments and medical bills.
“As far as financial goes, it’s basically destroying us,” Wenger said during a follow-up interview in March.
Wenger says he finds it “disgusting” how difficult it is for someone injured by a COVID vaccine to receive compensation from the government – the same government that pushed, and, in many cases, required Americans to receive the shot.
“You asked us to do our part to ‘Slow the spread,’” he wrote in an October email to officials from the Health Resources and Services Administration, which runs the government’s vaccine compensation programs. “Well we did our part! Now it is time for the Federal Government to do their part!”
FLAWS IN THE CICP PROGRAM
The countermeasures program, or CICP, is deeply flawed, several experts say. For fiscal years 2010 through 2021, it has compensated 6% of all non-COVID-related claims (29 out of 491 claims), for a total of $6 million in awards. The majority of claims were for the H1N1 influenza vaccine. Since the inclusion of the COVID vaccine and other COVID-related countermeasures, the total number of claims has skyrocketed to nearly 12,000, resulting in a giant backlog.
The countermeasures program is basically a black hole. It’s your right to file and lose,” says Renee Gentry, Director of the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at George Washington University Law School. “I don’t think it was ever anticipated to handle the number of vaccinations that have happened under COVID.”
CICP staffing levels appear to have ramped up as a result of the increased claims, according to information from a FOIA request filed by Wayne Rohde, who’s written two books on vaccine injury compensation. The CICP employed six federal staff and six contractors in fiscal year 2021. The actual/estimated staff increased to 42 federal staff and 12 contractors in 2022, then 42 federal staff and 20 contractors in 2023.
Budget levels also increased dramatically. Actual/estimated budgets for staff and
“We want to make sure that no one’s trying to game the system to get relief for something that doesn’t exist,” Becerra said. “That way, we can reserve the funds that we have for people like Mr. Flint and provide him with some help.” Becerra added that he would be willing have his team reach out to Hyde-Smith about Flint’s vaccine injury claim.
Three weeks later, the CICP denied Flint’s claim.
The letter from CICP concluded there was no solid evidence the vaccine caused Flint’s alleged injuries. It said “barotrauma from flying” – that is, ear discomfort often caused by altitude changes, also known as “airplane ear” – is a known cause of perilymphatic fistulas, which is one of the diagnoses Flint received from his doctor.
But Flint argues he wasn’t flying high enough to experience barotrauma. During his 15 years as an agricultural pilot, Flint says the highest he usually needed to fly was approximately 500 feet above the ground in order to turn his plane around. He says he was only 200 feet above ground at the time of his adverse event. By contrast, it’s common for commercial airlines to pressurize their cabins to an equivalent altitude of nearly 8,000 feet above sea level.
That’s like saying I got barotrauma from climbing to the top of a tree,” Flint told The National Desk.
Flint’s doctor also pushed back against the CICP’s decision and asked them to reconsider.
“Mr. Flint experienced intense head pressure within an hour of receiving his COVID vaccination,” wrote Louisiana-based neurotologist Gerard Gianoli. “Elevated intracranial pressure has been recognized as a complication of COVID vaccination, and given the sequence of events, more probable than not, it is the cause of Mr. Flint’s elevated intracranial pressure… [which] led to his perilymphatic fistula.”
Flint appealed his case – but he again was denied. The letter read, “Given the timeline of symptoms it was not plausible for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to have caused the otologic and vestibular issues experienced by Mr. Flint.”
Flint describes the denial as “ridiculous.”
Takes the shot… injured within 48 hrs. They claim that’s not plausible?!” Flint wrote in an email.
Flint works as a truck driver now that his medical condition has forced him to leave his crop-dusting job.
“Now I have no recourse. Can’t sue,” he told The National Desk. “It’s clear to me that there’s no way they [the CICP] would approve a pilot that became nearly incapacitated while flying.”
WHAT COUNTS AS A VACCINE INJURY?
It’s generally difficult to predict what will qualify as a COVID vaccine injury. That’s because the government has no published table specifying injuries that are associated with the COVID vaccine as it does for pandemic influenza and smallpox countermeasures.
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