Pandemic Response
What happened to Brianne Dressen when she spoke out about her adverse reactions from participating in the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine clinical trial?
Brianne Dressen, a clinical trial participant who experienced severe adverse reactions to the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, faced systematic censorship and surveillance when she tried to share her experience. Despite being a supportive Democrat who volunteered for the trial, she encountered government indifference to her health issues and was tracked by the Virality Project, which monitored her meetings with senators and media appearances. Within 24 hours of her first public appearance at a press conference with Senator Ron Johnson, Facebook shut down her support group where thousands of vaccine-injured individuals were seeking help and sharing their experiences. Additional support groups were subsequently terminated without explanation. Her case reveals a disturbing pattern of silencing vaccine-injured individuals through social media censorship and government surveillance. The tracking reports, which detailed her every move and were sent to the White House, demonstrate coordinated efforts to suppress first-hand accounts of vaccine injuries, raising serious constitutional concerns about free speech rights.
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VICE News
51:33 - 54:28
What happened to Brianne Dressen after participating in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial, and how did the trial organizers respond to her adverse reactions?
Brianne Dressen experienced severe adverse reactions within hours of receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine during a Phase 3 trial. Her symptoms began with tingling in her injection arm on the way home, followed by blurred and double vision, distorted hearing, and eventually a slumped left leg that caused her to walk into doorways. Despite the trial contract promising medical and financial support for research-related injuries, Dressen received no response when she called to report her symptoms the morning after the injection. As a preschool teacher during COVID-19, she prioritized her students' need for stability and continued working despite her debilitating symptoms. Her experience highlights critical gaps in vaccine trial participant support systems and raises important questions about accountability and transparency in clinical research, ultimately leading her to co-found React19.org to advocate for other vaccine-injured individuals.
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VICE News
05:00 - 07:32
What are the legal challenges and prevalence of adverse reactions from COVID-19 vaccines based on clinical trial data?
Brianne Dressen explains that vaccine injury cases face unique legal obstacles due to the PREP Act, which provides robust protections for vaccination programs. Unlike typical injury cases that would be "open and shut," vaccine-related lawsuits encounter impenetrable legal barriers because vaccines are held to different standards in the United States. Regarding prevalence, Dressen cites two key studies showing significant adverse event rates. Freeman and Doshi's analysis of clinical trial data found serious adverse events occur at a rate of 1 in 800 participants. Additionally, the German government has officially recognized "post vaccine syndrome" as a severe multi-system condition occurring after COVID vaccination, with rates similar to long COVID at 2 in 5,000 cases. These findings highlight the gap between reported adverse events and actual clinical trial data, raising questions about transparency in vaccine safety reporting.
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VICE News
33:42 - 35:59
What motivated Brianne Dressen, a Utah mother and preschool teacher, to participate in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial?
Brianne Dressen was motivated to participate in the vaccine trial by multiple converging factors. She had healthcare professionals in her family who expressed serious concerns about COVID-19's initial variant, reporting alarming cases of clotting disorders and heart attacks in young people at hospitals. This personal testimony from trusted medical sources created genuine fear about the pandemic's severity. Additionally, the media environment amplified these concerns with apocalyptic messaging about potential societal collapse. As someone who was fully vaccinated along with her children, and married to a PhD chemist, Dressen viewed participation as following science and fulfilling civic duty. She was already predisposed to get vaccinated and saw the trial as an opportunity to help society emerge from the pandemic with minimal damage. Her decision was further reinforced when friends successfully participated in Moderna trials, making her receptive when AstraZeneca's clinic contacted her directly for screening.
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VICE News
00:14 - 04:38
What legal protections do pharmaceutical companies have against lawsuits from COVID vaccine injuries, and what recourse do injured individuals have?
Pharmaceutical companies are protected from COVID vaccine injury lawsuits through the PREP Act, which provides blanket immunity under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). This protection extends beyond COVID vaccines to other treatments like remdesivir and monkeypox vaccines, leaving injured individuals with no legal recourse against manufacturers. Currently, over 100 legal challenges to the PREP Act have failed, making Brianne Dressen's AstraZeneca case potentially the first to succeed in challenging this protection. Injured individuals are essentially on their own, with no established support programs or dedicated research into addressing vaccine-related harms. The situation highlights a significant gap in accountability, where those harmed by vaccines have limited options and must often rely on informal networks of other injured individuals to find information and support, creating an urgent need for legal and policy reforms.
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VICE News
31:40 - 33:17
What was the government and institutional response when COVID vaccine trial participants reported severe adverse effects from the AstraZeneca vaccine?
When Brianne Dressen and another participant reported identical severe neurological injuries from the AstraZeneca vaccine trial, the NIH responded within 24 hours to their reports. Despite acknowledging these injuries, government messaging continued to promote vaccine safety, telling people to "go get your shot" while claiming they were just working on FDA paperwork. Ten days after the reports, two significant actions occurred: AstraZeneca was pulled from consideration in the United States, and the National Institutes of Health initiated a formal study to investigate neurological complications following COVID vaccines in general. This response highlighted the disconnect between official safety messaging and the serious adverse events being documented by trial participants.
Watch clip answer (00:47m)
VICE News
16:28 - 17:15