Two stories on vaccine injuries.
The first is a story of persistence in the face of institutional denial.
The second is a story of shifting narratives. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) named Moderna vaccines as the cause of the problem discussed! I’d have expected them to go right on covering up the impact of vaccines.
These stories may reveal a shift in the narrative. If the CBC story is anything to go on, mainstream media may be moving their narrative to include some vaccine injuries.
Mother Blames Covid Vaccine and Government After Son Develops Blood Clots in His Brain 9 Days Following Vaccine – Son Now Has More Clots and a Damaged Heart
Everest stands 6’9″ and was a basketball player prior to the incident.
“You all know someone this happened to (my son) It’s not as rare as people think. It is true [and] it is not misinformation. Happy to share his medical records with anyone who wants to see for themselves,” Mrs. Romney wrote.
“[The vaccine] has altered his life path forever. He is lucky to be alive today but his life will never be the same. In 2021, everyone who talked about this had their social media pages frozen. We need truth in reporting these events. It is not rare & it happened to us,” she continued.
Her son, Everest, was in ICU back in April 2021 (Source: Cherie Romney)
Everest was in ICU after suffering an adverse reaction from the vaccine (Source: Cherie Romney)
Mrs. Romney said that if she had listened and followed the doctors’ advice, her son “would not be alive today.”
“If I had kept quiet and listened to the [doctors] at first, Everest would not be alive today. While they admit now that they were wrong in the beginning, the resistance to even checking him for the blood clots was immense. Had we not persevered against them, there would be a very different ending to this story,” she said.
On Tuesday, January 3, 2023, Mrs. Romney gave an update about Everest.
She said that Everest had developed another blood clot in a deep vein in his right leg, and doctors had confirmed that his heart was still damaged due to the vaccine.
“Just left the Emergency Room TODAY. Everest has another blood clot, a deep vein in his right leg & they have confirmed his heart is still damaged. Referral to a cardiologist – more to come about his heart as it seems the damage from the inflammation may be permanent. Never mind the [effects] of the traumatic brain injury he still deals with on a daily basis,” Mrs. Romney wrote.
Mrs. Romney went on to blame the mRNA Covid vaccine and the Biden administration for suppressing information about the vaccine’s risks.
“Thanks Covid vaccine, thanks to the US government. My former 6’9” basketball player is no longer a basketball player and he is back on blood thinners starting tonight. So glad I was doing “the right thing” and protecting him from Covid, bummer that the lies about that have altered his life forever and almost killed him. Covid never even made him sick,” she said.
On Thursday, January 5, 2023, Everest was back at St Mark’s Hospital and he was admitted for the night for observation.
Mrs. Romney gave another sad update. She said Everest’s deep vein thrombosis had moved to his lungs.
“He is at St Mark’s Hospital tonight, with multiple pulmonary emboli. Tomorrow – hematologist & cardiologist. Hopefully home soon,” Mrs. Romney wrote.
According to Mrs. Romney, doctors don’t know how to stop the effects caused by the vaccine.
“We know the cause, it’s just that the Covid vaccine is such an unknown that the [doctors] don’t know how to stop the [effects] once they’ve put everything in motion. It’s more about managing the symptoms because the damage can’t be undone,” she responded in one of her posts.
Note: Anti-vaxx bias. Thanks to Emma.
‘My body was burning’: Suffering since COVID shots, Gatineau man desperate for relief
CBC, Jan. 11, 2023
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/covid-vaccine-moderna-side-effect-government-help-1.6294908
Tisir Otahbachi developed a painful skin condition shortly after receiving two doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in July and August 2021. He’s seeking compensation from the province of Quebec, but has been unable to find a doctor there who will back his claim.
A Gatineau, Que., man who developed a severe skin condition after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine says he’s ready to give up on Canada’s health-care system and seek treatment abroad.
Mohammed Tisir Otahbachi, 29, received his first dose of the Moderna vaccine on July 15, 2021, at a Walmart pharmacy in Gatineau. Ten days later, small acne-like blisters appeared on his right hand.
Otahbachi, who goes by his middle name, told CBC he had never experienced any kind of skin problem before. He tried a topical cream suggested by a pharmacist, but it didn’t work.
While serious complications from COVID-19 vaccines are rare, Otahbachi had a sneaking suspicion his shot might have had something to do with the rash. Nevertheless, he was eager to receive his second dose and returned to the same pharmacy for another Moderna jab on Aug. 13, 2021.
“Two days after that, like 48 hours later, almost the whole of my body — my hands, arms, my legs, even my back — it was [hit with] the same thing, and it started burning a little bit. There was some pain,” Otahbachi recalled.
“I recognized there is something happening on my body because of the vaccine.”
A man’s hand with severe blistering eczema.
Ottawa allergist Antony Ham Pong described Otahbachi’s condition as ‘a severe blistering, weeping peeling eczematoid skin reaction,’ and noted what ‘appears to be a significant temporal relationship to receiving the vaccine and his skin symptoms.’ (Submitted by Tisir Otahbachi)
Couldn’t find a doctor
Accompanied by his father, Otahbachi, who has no family doctor, went to the Gatineau Hospital. After waiting 23 hours and learning it could be many more, they left.
Otahbachi said he tried every doctor’s office he could find in Gatineau, then began calling medical clinics in Montreal, Mirabel, Terrebonne and even Quebec City, more than 400 kilometres away. None were accepting new patients. Numerous attempts to book an appointment at a local walk-in clinic proved equally fruitless.
By then it was September, and Otahbachi’s skin condition was worsening. He had been working as a mover and Uber driver, but the painful rash that covered much of his body cost him both jobs.
“I couldn’t work because my body was burning. I was not able to touch anything, even the water,” said Otahbachi, who was reduced to washing with baby wipes.
Moderna acknowledges that body-wide rashes are among the allergic reactions that can occur in rare cases following a vaccine dose, but says those symptoms typically present themselves within minutes of the shot. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Increasingly desperate, Otahbachi began searching for a doctor in Ontario, where Quebec residents must pay out of pocket for some health-care services.
His wife, Fatima Outaleb, was working from home for a major insurance company, but the couple was expecting a baby and money was tight.
‘I was dying’
With a loan from his father, Mohammad Tawfiq, Otahbachi finally managed to get an appointment at a medical centre in Ottawa. He was prescribed a hydrocortisone/anti-fungal cream and tablets used to treat bacterial infections, and referred to a dermatologist. The dermatologist prescribed him antihistamine tablets and more ointment.
None of the medication helped. By that point it was March 2022, more than eight months since Otahbachi’s first vaccine dose.
“At that time I was dying, I needed any solution,” he said. “The pain I was in, you cannot imagine it. I couldn’t sleep [for] many nights, months, weeks … my normal life was done.”
Throughout his ordeal, Otahbachi noticed something else: none of the doctors he had consulted appeared willing to acknowledge any possible link between his vaccination the previous summer and the sudden onset of his skin condition.
One doctor he visited suggested his condition was an allergic reaction to his gloves, or the shampoo he’d been using for years.
“The doctors that I’ve been to, they were very worried and scared to mention or say my condition … is because of the COVID vaccine. They were very worried about that,” he said.
Severe reactions rare
Moderna acknowledges a “remote chance” that its COVID-19 vaccines will cause severe allergic reactions, including “a bad rash all over your body,” but says such symptoms typically occur within a few minutes of injection.
The Public Health Agency of Canada notes that serious adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines are extremely rare, representing just 0.011 per cent of the more than 95 million doses administered in this country as of Dec. 9.
Still, there have been 20 reported cases of erythema multiforme, a skin reaction that can be triggered either by an infection or by some medicines, in people who received the Moderna vaccine.
Other studies have noted “growing evidence” of a link between COVID-19 vaccines and various cutaneous reactions including pruritus (itching), urticaria (a raised, itchy rash), angioedema (swelling) and morbilliform (measles-like) eruptions.
Both Outaleb and Tawfiq told CBC that prior to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, Otahbachi had never experienced any sort of skin ailment.
Outaleb says it has been ‘heartbreaking’ to witness her husband’s suffering. ‘I’m the only one who really knows what he has been through,’ Outaleb told CBC. ‘I really feel sorry for him.’ (Jean Delisle/CBC)
Allergist notes possible link
That spring, Outaleb gave birth to the couple’s first child, Julia, in Winchester, Ont. For pediatric care, they were referred to a family physician in Ingleside, Ont., about 100 kilometres from their home. (Unable to find adequate maternity care near Gatineau, Outaleb had also turned to Ontario.)
On their first visit with their newborn daughter, the doctor, Michael Bensimon, noticed Otahbachi’s blisters.
“[He] said, ‘What’s that on your hands?'” Ohtabachi recalled. “He told me, ‘This is because of the COVID vaccine, yeah?'”
Bensimon referred Otahbachi to Ottawa allergist Antony Ham Pong, who on Aug. 29 provided him with a letter confirming that Otahbachi suffered “a severe blistering, weeping peeling eczematoid skin reaction” shortly after receiving the Moderna vaccine.
“There appears to be a significant temporal relationship to receiving the vaccine and his skin symptoms,” Ham Pong wrote. “While there is no absolute proof that the COVID-19 vaccine caused this condition, the time relationship … strongly suggests that the vaccine played a role in bringing these symptoms on.”
Ham Pong told CBC he has seen cases of hives among other patients who received the Moderna vaccine, but those mostly occurred after booster shots. He said to his knowledge, Otahbachi’s case of chronic dermatitis appears relatively unique.
“You have to have a number of people reporting this to say, OK, there is a link,” Ham Pong said. “From my point of view, we’re trying to manage his condition, whatever the cause of it.”
Shortly after receiving his second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the rash that had appeared on Ohtabachi’s right hand spread to his limbs and back. (Submitted by Tisir Otahbachi)
Seeking compensation
Armed with that letter, Otahbachi reached out to his MP Greg Fergus and his MNA Mathieu Lévesque, whose offices assisted him in applying to Quebec’s vaccine injury compensation program for financial relief.
It was a long shot. By the end of last March, 125 claims had been filed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, of which only eight had been evaluated and only three had resulted in payouts.
(It’s not known how many of those claims were related to COVID-19 vaccines, though the program’s administrators acknowledge a spike in applications since the pandemic was declared.)
I’m wasting my time, I’m wasting my health, I’m wasting my body.
– Tisir Otahbachi
In late October, Otahbachi received a reply from Quebec’s health ministry informing him that to complete his claim, he’d need to obtain a letter from a physician practising in that province. He was back to square one.
“I was dying for over four or five months to find a doctor in Quebec, and I couldn’t,” he said.
Doug Angus, a professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management and an expert in health economics and policy, called Otahbachi’s ordeal a “classic example” of a chronic shortcoming of Canada’s health-care system.
“This image that we have of a Canadian health-care system being portable from one province to another province is kind of a fallacy,” Angus said. “It’s frustrating for people who, like this individual, get caught right in the middle of it.”
Otahbachi has now paid hundreds of dollars to consult doctors in Ontario, not including the cost of his prescriptions that aren’t covered by Quebec’s health insurance plan.
Quebec’s health ministry declined CBC’s request for an interview about Otahbachi’s case, but wrote in French in an email that “the declaration of a clinical event related to vaccination … does not constitute a claim under the compensation plan.”
The ministry reiterated that the physician representing the claimant before the medical review committee that assesses claims for compensation “must have a licence to practise in good standing and be a member of the Collège des médecins du Québec.”
Some physicians may be hesitant to draw a link between COVID-19 vaccines and serious medical complications, said Earl Brown, a professor emeritus of virology at the University of Ottawa. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
Diagnosis difficult
Earl Brown, a professor emeritus of virology at the University of Ottawa, said diagnosing such cases can be extremely difficult for physicians.
“Sometimes they don’t know what caused it, and so they don’t feel they can associate it with the vaccine. But you have to be careful you don’t rule things out when you have no reason to rule them out,” he said. “Those are tricky situations, but I think it happens all too often.”
According to Brown, some medical professionals may be extra cautious because they don’t want to fan the flames of the vaccination debate.
“There’s a big nervousness about amplifying negative stories about vaccine,” he said.
“People are very careful because the anti-vaxxers will take anything and run with it, whether it’s on-base or off-base.”
The blistering rash that covered Otahbachi’s hands improved significantly after he received a dose of Dupixent in November, but is now returning. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
Last fall, Ham Pong suggested one more possible option to ease Otahbachi’s suffering: injections of a drug called dupilumab, approved by Health Canada in 2017 under the brand name Dupixent.
The hitch with Dupixent was the cost. At more than $1,000 a shot, and with biweekly doses required for at least a year, Otahbachi was staring at a $30,000 prescription that he couldn’t possibly afford.
While Ham Pong explored the possibility of getting the drug covered for his out-of-province patient, he referred Otahbachi to another allergist at The Ottawa Hospital who was able to at least get him started with samples.
After two injections, Otahbachi’s symptoms have improved considerably but haven’t disappeared entirely. He fears as soon as the free doses run out, the painful rash that has tortured him for well over a year will return.
His faith in Canadian health care shattered, Otahbachi has begun exploring treatment options in Morocco and Turkey.
“Here, actually I feel like … I’m wasting my time, I’m wasting my health, I’m wasting my body. It’s [a] hopeless case,” he said.
Outaleb, still the family’s sole breadwinner, said it’s been heartbreaking to watch her husband’s suffering.
“I really feel sorry for that because he does not deserve it. He’s a great dad, he’s a great husband,” she said. “As a family we’re a victim of what happened. It’s not really fair for a family who are just starting their life to live this.”