Brianne Dressen: Gaslit by Doctors and Loved Ones, Some Vaccine-Injured Are Making the Ultimate Choi
- EPOCHTV
- Jan 27, 2023
- 36 min read
Updated: Feb 7, 2023
Many in the vaccine-injured community have been told their symptoms—from piercing, constant ringing in their ears to paralysis in their lower body—is due to “anxiety.”
Brianne Dressen, a former preschool teacher in Utah, was severely injured after participating in AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial in November 2020. She is the co-chair of React19, the leading non-profit organization aiding those injured by genetic vaccines.
“This has happened to tens of thousands of Americans that I know of—it’s likely far more—where patients are met with physicians that are doubtful, unbelieving, and in many cases, just outright dismissive to their patient’s complaints. And that really puts the patient in a very vulnerable situation, especially if you have family members that are doubtful of what’s actually happening with you… There’s some people that have made the ultimate choice to end their suffering,” said Dressen.
Dressen’s organization, run entirely by volunteers, is working with over 20,000 vaccine-injured Americans to help them get the treatment and support they need and connect them to doctors willing to help them.
“We want the injured to be empowered to be able to make their decisions and take ownership of their healing when everything around them—their medical teams, their jobs, their government—has abandoned them and essentially stripped them of that power.”
Dressen says the NIH knows a lot more than they let on. After Dressen and her husband repeatedly pled for help, the NIH flew her and others to the NIH to be evaluated, studied, and in some cases, treated.
But to this day, the public and the medical community are not being informed about the major neurological injuries that can occur post-vaccination—even though the NIH knows early intervention is key for such autoimmune dysfunction.
Interview trailer:
Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/brianne-dressen-gaslit-by-doctors-and-loved-ones-some-vaccine-injured-are-making-the-ultimate-choice-to-end-their-suffering_4994340.html
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Brianne Dressen, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Brianne Dressen:
Thanks for having me.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s been about a year since you sat down here on American Thought Leaders with Maddie de Garay and Stephanie de Garay and helped introduce me to the realities facing vaccine injured in America, specifically related to these genetic vaccines. I’m really happy to have you back and to figure out what has happened in a year. I know a lot has. What I want is to get your personal story here for the record. What happened to you?
Ms. Dressen:
My personal story started a long time ago. It’s been over two years now. Before my vaccine, I was healthy. I was a mother of two young kids and a preschool teacher. I was definitely all in. It wasn’t a matter of if I was going to get the vaccine, but it was going to be when. As soon as I could get it, I was going to do that. And at the time, I firmly believed that if I got vaccinated, I would not spread the disease to others. I wanted to do everything I could to be part of the solution to take care of those around me.
So, I signed up for a clinical trial with AstraZeneca here in the United States and got my shot on November 4th, 2020. Within an hour, I had tingling down the same arm of my shot. Later that night, my vision had become blurry and doubled. Within two-and-a-half weeks, I had landed in the hospital after four ER visits.
Each visit had new symptoms that were very concerning, severe tachycardia, bradycardia, and limb weakness. The paresthesia moved from one arm to the other to all over my body. There was this horrific electric shock all over my body that I still deal with to this day. Severe tinnitus—I had a freight train sound in one ear, and a high in E in the other.
When I landed in the hospital, my legs just gave out. They weren’t working anymore. I had become incontinent. My sensitivity to light and sound had become so severe that my kids couldn’t touch me. They couldn’t be in the same room as me. My husband had put towels over the windows to make the room darker. He would come in to check on me, and even just the swishing of his pants was too painful for my ears. The running of water was too painful for my ears. The dog panting was too much for my ears. It was bad enough that I had to be holed up in a room by myself 24/7. I was also removed from my family, and definitely removed from my career and everything else.
Even my teeth were too sensitive. I couldn’t brush my teeth. Whatever the hypersensitivity was, it was beyond just a few of my sensory inputs. It was a body-wide, systems-wide dysfunction. When I was admitted to the hospital, they weren’t sure what it was. They didn’t run typical tests to rule out GBS or transverse myelitis or any of these other neurological issues that are typical with vaccines, although not common.
Instead, they slapped me with the label of anxiety due to the COVID vaccine. And four days later, I was discharged with intensive in-home physical and occupational therapy to rehab my legs and my cognitive deficits due to anxiety due to the COVID vaccine.
Mr. Jekielek:
It might sound unbelievable to people that the collection of symptoms you describe would be diagnosed as anxiety by anybody.
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. It’s strange because I was the first at that point or one of the first, and so I gave the doctors a lot of leeway, because it was very clear that they had never seen anything like this before. I was like, “Well, I’m the first. They haven’t really understood it.” Maybe that’s why I was gaslit and treated the way I was.
But the sad reality is now this has happened to tens of thousands of Americans that I know of. It’s most likely far more, where patients are met with physicians that are doubtful, unbelieving, and in many cases just outright dismissive to their patient’s complaints.
That really puts the patient in a very vulnerable situation, especially if you have family members that are doubtful of what’s happening with you, or you have a family member that’s supportive who takes you to the doctor’s appointment and the doctor tells you’re crazy, and then your family member hears that you’re crazy.
What you know inside your body is that this is not anxiety. This is not depression. This is not some psychosomatic issue, because your legs are failing, you’ve got electrical shocks going on, you’ve got severe tinnitus, you can’t see right, and you can’t think straight. This isn’t just a small moment in time where you’re having a mental breakdown.
It’s an immune system dysfunction. There’s something wrong in the body. But the doctors are being told that it’s not something wrong with the body, that it’s all up here. And so, it isolates the people that are suffering with this, and it puts them in a very vulnerable situation.
Mr. Jekielek:
I want to get into the bigger picture with all these different people that you’ve been working with now for quite a while. But going back to that time, presumably you reached out to the people involved in the trial, and so how was that?
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. All the way up until this day, I have yet to speak to a real human at the drug company. I have talked to people at the clinical trial office. Back when we very quickly became financially ruined because of this, we reached out to the drug company and the clinical trial company begging them for help. We had to refinance our house, because they did not own up to their part of our contract. The contract says that they will pay for any and all expenses resulting from injury, and they have not owned up to that.
At the beginning I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I was like, “Well, maybe they just haven’t heard me. There’s a breakdown in communication.” But looking back at all the emails and the phone calls and the repeated cries for help between my husband and I that we made to the drug company, it’s very obvious that it was intentional.
As soon as I was injured, it’s very obvious that the effort on the side of the drug company to do nothing was in full effect. They weren’t going to do anything. There was no effort that was going to be made to help me. They literally left me for dead.
The only time that I received compensation from them was because a news story ran locally, and they wired $590 to my account without my consent. We told them it was without our consent, and then we never heard from them again. And then six months later, another news story ran, and the reporter called asking for a statement.
While they were on the phone with the reporter, they sent a settlement letter to my email, and they spelled my name wrong. The contract absolved them of any future payments, and we’re required to make a statement that AstraZeneca did nothing wrong and all kinds of things. We were signing our life away, essentially for $1,200.
Mr. Jekielek:
Wait, this was sent to you without any communication?
Ms. Dressen:
Correct.
Mr. Jekielek:
Like a form letter, what was it?
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. It was a form letter—regarding this matter, everything will be resolved and settled after this. And I’m not a person. According to the drug company I’m not a human being, I’m a number. And sadly, for them, I’m inconvenient to them.
But they are a company worth ten of billions of dollars. And I’m not asking for a whole lot. I’m just asking for what my contract is due, for my medical expenses, so I wouldn’t have had to refinance my house, and so that my kids could still be in a stable situation financially. They’re not willing to lift a finger to make that happen.
Mr. Jekielek:
One thing that strikes me here is that the nature of this first diagnosis seems critical here.
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. That anxiety diagnosis plagued me for six, seven months until I went to the NIH. It didn’t matter how many doctors I saw, what tests I had run, what positive tests I had, it didn’t matter. If I showed up in a doctor’s office and if I cried even a little bit because my life was ruined, then yes, it was all up here.
And I believed the doctors, I did. They told me it was anxiety so many times that I was like, “Well, they’re the professionals, so they would know.” I actually went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist did a full neuropsychological evaluation. He said, “I’m not sure what this is, but this is not anxiety. There’s something going on in your body. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not anxiety.”
He issued statements back to all of my doctors. Even with that, they still didn’t change their mind. The NIH reached out to them, and they still did not change their mind. After months of dealing with this, then the NIH finally took pity on me and flew me out to be treated there.
Mr. Jekielek:
Explain to me how this works. You said seven months down the road, the NIH gets involved. Please explain to me that whole piece of the puzzle.
Ms. Dressen:
My husband is a chemist, and he realized very early on that the doctors were not going to do anything. The drug company wasn’t going to do anything. If something were to be resolved, he was going to be the one to figure it out. He started digging into the studies and reaching out to researchers all over the globe.
A lead researcher in Germany got my blood a month after my injury, and my test result came back that I was positive for anti-neuronal autoantibodies, which means that your immune system is attacking your nerves. It’s something nobody wants. And even with that, it was still labeled as anxiety.
He reached out to Dr. Nath and Dr. Safavi at the NIH on January 11th of 2021 about a month-and-a-half into my injury. They reached out and replied right away. There was another person that was injured by AstraZeneca here in the United States that had a very similar cascade of symptoms after her COVID vaccine from AstraZeneca. We got them in touch with the NIH. So, there were two of us that were complaining about the same thing.
We don’t know if it’s directly correlated or not, but 10 days later, AstraZeneca was pulled off the market after we filed those complaints. At that point, NIH started a study. It’s on record. They started a study January 11th of 2021 to investigate COVID vaccine injuries that are neurological in nature. From there, they started collecting samples from people all over the country. They started enrolling individuals. They started flying people out.
And I’m patient number one in that study and my friend Dr. Denise Hertz, an injured gastroenterologist from California, she’s patient number two. It’s very strange to see chronologically who was in that study. Literally it’s the people I met in sequence, the full first row of the people that are in that study.
So, they studied us. They went so far as to collect samples from someone who had died. The amount of knowledge that the NIH has on what’s going on with the COVID vaccine injuries is very intimate. It’s very detailed. Yet what the public is being told about this is that the vaccines are safe, period. There’s no asterisk, there’s no subtext to that. There’s no, “The vaccines are safe. But by the way, we’ve been flying people out for the last two years, and we’re finding clues that could probably help these people get better, but we’re not going to tell you guys what those are. We’re just going to keep it secret.”
Mr. Jekielek:
If I recall, Dr. Nath talked about how early intervention is the most valuable thing when these injuries occur.
Ms. Dressen:
He did. Yes. He said this to me privately, and then he also disclosed this in an article that was published by the American Academy of Neurology. They published this paper in the fall of 2021, six, seven months into the public rollout. But then they already knew that early intervention is key, as with any immune dysfunction in the body. Early intervention is key.
But they also know that immunotherapy could be implemented and help stop the severe cascade of the disease. The NIH knows this, and the FDA also knows this. They know that there’s this very crucial piece to the puzzle to keeping people from becoming chronic, but they’re not telling or informing medical professionals of the necessity of early intervention.
What’s happened is that instead of learning from my case in the clinical trial, learning from Maddie de Gary, learning from Olivia Teseniar who was injured in the Moderna clinical trial, this information has all been hidden, swept under the rug and minimized, instead of taking these cases, investigating them appropriately, collecting the data, and then using that information to help those that are like us and who came after us from becoming as chronic and severe as we are.
Mr. Jekielek:
There’s something really important here. The NIH treatment actually helped you profoundly as I understand it, right?
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
This treatment does exist.
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. That’s where it’s hard for me because, and I’ve told him this, he’s one of the main reasons why I’m still alive.
Mr. Jekielek:
Dr. Nath?
Ms. Dressen:
Yes, Dr. Nath. He was one of the very few that validated me and my condition. He was the guy at the NIH that was calling my doctors locally and saying, “Look, your patient isn’t crazy. There’s something wrong with her. You need to help her.” He was the only guy in the country doing that.
But then on top of that, he’s the guy to do that. If you’re going to have someone talking about a novel neuro-infectious issue with your body, he’s the guy in the United States. He is the top mind in neuro-infectious disease. It’s not like we just had anyone pulling for us.
But what blows my mind is that we funneled literally hundreds of patients to the NIH to be studied and evaluated and helped. But it wasn’t just for the hundreds. It wasn’t just for a select few. The whole reason we were doing that is because we were promised that they would take that information, they would process it, and then they would disclose it to the public.
We didn’t go for ourselves. We went for the tens of thousands of others like us that needed similar care. So, I have almost a survivor’s guilt, I do. Because why was I selected? Why was I one of the very few selected to go to get that golden ticket to go to the NIH, to be able to have the opportunity to have my trajectory of recovery essentially changed, when I know tens of thousands of Americans that are really good people that deserve the same treatment? They deserve the same interventions, they deserve the same compassion, and they were not afforded that. They weren’t afforded that because the people that could do this stayed silent.
Mr. Jekielek:
Why?
Ms. Dressen:
That’s a good question. What’s the reason for that? Is it because they don’t want to perpetuate vaccine hesitancy? Is it because they’re getting millions of dollars in royalties from Moderna? Is it more nuanced than that? Is it really just because someone told them that they need to shut up?
I’m not entirely sure why, but I understand that it was not right for the American public to not be informed. Everybody in this country deserves to know the full risks and benefits of the COVID vaccines. It’s that simple. Every single American should be able to make a full informed decision, not based on fear, not based on promises, but informed by data.
Mr. Jekielek:
And not based on information apparently designed to elicit a behavioral response, which is my observation and also of numerous people I’ve spoken with. There’s this feeling that you’re not being told the truth. You’re being told information that will get you to do something specific that is intended.
Ms. Dressen:
Right. Obviously, if there was an extreme issue with COVID vaccines it could shift policy. At the time the policy was you get your shot, you sit down, and you shut up. There was no middle ground for understanding what could increase the likelihood of having a severe adverse reaction.
And who had to figure that out? We did. We had to figure that out on our own. We went through all of our injured individuals, and we asked them what pre-existing conditions they had. That’s something the government should be doing. That’s something that should be backed by pharmaceutical dollars. We shouldn’t be having to figure that out. The taxpayers shouldn’t have to be figuring this out.
But it also blows my mind that the taxpayers financed the development of this product, taxpayers financed promoting this product, and the taxpayers ultimately are going to have to pay for the aftermath of the failure of this product, because the drug companies are liability free. It’s an amazing business model for them to just be able to print money.
Mr. Jekielek:
How many of the hundred-plus people that you recommended or introduced to the NIH got some help?
Ms. Dressen:
I want to say most of them did. It was very strange though, because some of the people that reached out to the NIH were told there’s nothing going on here. So there was a select few that they would just, I don’t know if they were overwhelmed or what, but during that time, they would just be like, “There’s nothing going on here. There’s no research going on here.” It was very strange.
But then if you were one of the lucky ones to actually get them to respond and call your doctor at home, your entire case management with your local doctor would change. It would change everything just to have the NIH say, “Yes, this is happening. You need to help your patient.” Maddie de Garay was one of those whose doctor was called from the NIH saying, “Yes, this person’s having a reaction. You probably need to validate them and run testing and here’s some possible treatments.”
Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s look back at the Maddie de Garay case. It was amazing to have Maddie on a year ago. Again, she was a very brave young girl, let’s just say. I don’t know what has happened in the past year. I know there were many, many steps before she got validated. What is it about this case that is particularly close to your heart? Of course, it’s hard not to love Maddie, but there’s more to it than that.
Ms. Dressen:
Maddie’s a kid. Of all of the cases that we’ve had come through React 19, the tens of thousands, the treatment that Maddie has got has been by far the worst. She’s gotten the worst medical care. She’s gotten the worst treatment from the drug companies and the government. She’s been exploited to no end from people within her own sphere.
That kid deserves better. She’s resilient. She’s incredibly bright. She is hilarious. I don’t think people realize the amount of just sheer grit and will that that kid has to make it through every day. And I’m going to do everything I can to get that kid out of that wheelchair. We’re going to do everything we can. I’m not going to stop until she’s better.
Mr. Jekielek:
Very briefly, we do have an interview about a year ago where we talked about her case, so what has shifted? And I’ll encourage our viewers to take a look at that. But just very briefly, if you could just summary what happened to her, and then where has things progressed in the past year?
Ms. Dressen:
She was coded as a stomachache, even though her legs stopped working. She has a form of gastroparesis where her throat muscles won’t let her swallow, so she has a feeding tube. She was having several seizures a day early on. She had cognitive issues. Her vision is still messed up. She’s got some fine motor things that are starting to get better.
But I’m telling you, she’s finally able to start getting some of these treatments that it’s taken us over a year-and-a-half to get these treatment protocols finally in place for her, because all these doctors kept using the fact that she’s a minor as an excuse not to help her. “She’s a kid, so we’re not specialized in pediatrics.”
Mr. Jekielek:
But shouldn’t it be the opposite?
Ms. Dressen:
It should be the opposite. It should be. Look, this is a kid, she should be jumped to the front of the line. Clinical trial participants should be jumped to the front of the line. And in reality, what we’ve learned is that injured clinical trial participants and injured kids, they go to the bottom of the barrel.
Her treatment is very expensive, and it’s very tenuous. They’ve cycled through numerous different trials and options. It’s been hard, but her neck is starting to stabilize and she’s starting to see a little bit of improvement. I’m confident that we’ll get her back to some measure of life. But in reality, that kid has been abandoned, and her case is not uncommon. That’s what’s happening to people all over this country. They’re being abandoned. They’re being ignored. I understand that people are tired of COVID. They’re so tired of COVID.
It was toxic. It was hard on everybody, and people are ready to move on. They’re ready to move on to the next step and to put COVID behind us. But we can’t. Essentially, we’re trapped. We’re trapped in a COVID nightmare. And it’s never going to stop because we have permanent physical ailments.
We have a government that still continues to insist that we don’t exist. Drug companies don’t want to admit that this is happening. And why would they? Because the government gave them the free ticket out for liability. They are not liable or obligated to help us in any way, so why would they?
This comes back to everyday Americans, and actually everyday people all over the globe. Hopefully, they are going to have the compassion to step back and realize, “Look, we’ve left these people on the battlefield.” It’s a decision that everyone’s going to have to make. “Do we leave them there on the battlefield or do we pick them up? Do we try to bring them with us to move forward?”
Mr. Jekielek:
I want to explore that a little further. There’s one thing I want to touch on before we go there, which disturbed me quite a bit. You mentioned something about how Maddie was exploited by people.
Ms. Dressen:
All sides.
Mr. Jekielek:
Right. What happened?
Ms. Dressen:
It’s sad. This probably will ruffle some feathers but it needs to be said. The injured, largely, have been used for our stories. People come and they’re like, “Come tell us the worst part of your life.” I don’t think people realize it’s asking a rape victim to come and recount the most horrific experience of their life over and over and over. It’s not healing. It’s traumatizing. It’s like ripping off a band aid all the time, in the guise of trying to further and help people understand and increase awareness.
The step beyond just our stories is there’s more action that needs to be taken. There’s political action. There are policies that need to be changed to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. But what’s strange is when you have someone that’s in a wheelchair, she’s basically the icon for the vaccine failure, and she’s turned into that.
You would think that we would have people flooding in to help her. But instead, what has happened is she’s being used to increase followings, increase notoriety, and line pockets with money. That money’s not coming back to them. It’s not. The support that they’ve received have been from a very select few of individuals in this sphere who have really seen what’s been happening to her and realized, “Yes, we can’t do this to a kid. We can’t just put her out on a stage and then send her home to be alone and suffering by herself.”
“We need to lean in. We need to find her medical interventions. We need to provide some financial support.” It’s one thing to have a bunch of injured people telling their stories, but that’s not what the injured need. We’re more than happy to stand there and increase advocacy and raise our voices and push because it’s the right thing to do.
It’s most definitely the most important thing we can do to help increase awareness, so people can understand what’s happening. But on the back end, there’s a whole lot that needs to be done beyond step one. And step one is recognition. But step two is to evaluate the issue and figure out what needs to be done to fix it. That’s where things get really hard and muddy.
Mr. Jekielek:
You’ve described now for all of us a number of the symptoms that you had, and then some of that was alleviated through the treatment you got through the NIH. There are some other people who have gotten this. In your organization, React 19 now, there’s 10,000-plus. I’d like to know more how that organization grew. Who are the people there? How does it fund itself? You mentioned there’s always this financial question hovering in the air. Please tell me where things are at.
Ms. Dressen:
Essentially, React 19 is a nonprofit that was organized because the government wasn’t doing their job. And because the government wasn’t doing their job, somebody had to. The injured realized, “We got to do it ourselves. If no one is coming to save us, we’ve got to do it ourselves.”
So, we started a nonprofit. It was started by the injured for the injured. In one short year we have amassed over 21,000 COVID vaccine injured just here in the United States. That number could be up to 27,000, 30,000 easily. And then, with our international partners, we have close to two dozen international partners across the globe.
Our numbers are big. But when it comes down to it, because of the censorship and the all-out oppression, our numbers are still small in comparison to who really is out there. But this organization was created by medical professionals, because they were the first ones that were injured. They are scientists and people that really want to make sure that there is financial, physical, and emotional support for those that are suffering from COVID vaccine adverse events.
Our funding is 100 per cent grassroots. We don’t have any philanthropists supporting us. It’s all just everyday people that are compassionate and they see the issues and they want to help. 100 percent of the donations go to supporting the injured. We are 100 percent volunteers, which is something I’m very proud of. We want to make sure that we do that and keep it that way, because we see the importance of every single dollar that comes in, and we know that that will make a difference for somebody.
Whether it’s through medical support or any other kind of support, resources need to be built. We have people literally living in cars that have to decide whether they’re going to be able to pay for their gas to go to the food bank to get their food or to go get their prescription. We’re able to help them get their prescription, help them get IVIG, and help them get red light therapy.
We want the injured to be empowered to make their decisions and take ownership of their healing when everything around them, their medical teams, their jobs, their government has abandoned them and essentially stripped them of that power. Our job now is to give that power back to them, so they can take the initiative to figure out what is going to work in their case.
But we have to put those pieces in place. We have to pave the path for them to get better. That takes money, and it takes a lot of effort, and a lot of different programs. We have an advocacy program where an injured is assigned an advocate. It’s like a buddy system. They listen to them and figure out what constellation of symptoms they have. They help them find local doctors that are compassionate and willing to stick with them and help them.
We have a financial compensation program, and we issue grants for $6,000 to $10,000. That’s strictly for medical expenses for people in need, and that has made a huge difference. It’s been incredible to see how many doors can open for people through that program. But that money just doesn’t magically fall out of thin air. That money has to come from somewhere. It’s hard to keep those coffers full because as soon as that money comes in, there’s somebody right in line that needs it.
And we know those people. We love those people. We know their names; we know their families. We want to do everything we can to make sure that we can get these people their lives back to stop the progression of their disease, because they have nobody. A lot of these people don’t have families that believe them.
We all have friends that don’t believe us. Big Tech is definitely against us. Hopefully, what we’re able to build through React 19 is a refuge for these people. In turn, these people will be able to find their voice and find physical strength to come out and push and stand with us and share their voices against the injustice that has happened to help us enact change so this doesn’t happen again. And so we can make sure that the injustices that many, many people have faced through the COVID pandemic are not repeated.
Mr. Jekielek:
I really want to talk about this gaslighting and how that played out. Because for example, for people that chose not to get vaccinated, there was huge stigma associated with that. There was the pandemic of unvaccinated rhetoric. I know that we already heard from you today how people were treated saying, “It’s a hysteria that you have. It’s some sort of emotional thing. It’s a stomachache.”
What was your reaction when you learned that these genetic vaccines, or at least in the Pfizer case, were never tested for transmission, with the knowledge that there’s this expectation in society that this was going to stop transmission? All the rhetoric was built around that, from what I could tell.
Ms. Dressen:
It didn’t surprise me, because by that point, I had gone from all-believing and part of the solution to my life is ruined. “Okay, wait, now I’m going to be part of the solution still, but it’s going to be in a way that I didn’t know needed to happen. And by that point, we already knew that it didn’t stop transmission. We knew that they weren’t looking for the things that they should have. They weren’t evaluating safety appropriately. They weren’t evaluating transmission appropriately.
And the data that they have, they’re not disclosing it to the public. The only way you’re able to get that data is through FOIA requests, and mountains of lawyers going after them. It still blows my mind that Americans are okay with very simple data sets being held back, and the government requesting that they be restricted from our view for 75 years. That should be a red flag for anybody.
Let’s be honest, transparency is so important. If we don’t have the raw data, then what do we have? All we have are promises, and that’s what we got, and those promises turned out to be lies. Nothing feeds conspiracy quite like having no transparency. And it’s not a conspiracy theory at this point. If you don’t have the data, you don’t have the data. Why are they holding onto the data if they have nothing to hide?
Because what we heard early on in the pandemic was that the overwhelming data shows that the vaccines are safe and effective. Rochelle Walensky, Janet Woodcock, Fauci, that’s what they were saying on all the mainstream media channels about the overwhelming data. We said, “Okay, let’s see the data.”
Zach Stieber with the Epoch Times has definitely landed a significant win in the quest for truth and transparency with the FOIA request that was awarded. And he was able to get a recent VAERS review done by the CDC. What they did is they reviewed all the adverse events through the VAERS system to look for safety signals. And what did they find? The CDC found that there are 500 safety signals that are more significant and higher than myocarditis.
Mr. Jekielek:
Which is one of the few that it has admitted to, or one of the few relationships that are admitted to.
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. The FDA takes great pride in identifying myocarditis based on six cases. And here we are with a dataset with 700-plus safety signals, and over 500 are stronger safety signals than myocarditis. Yet what about those 500 that are actually disclosed to the public? How many of those?
How many people are struggling with those 500 issues, and they’re being told, “It’s nothing,” that it’s in their head. “Oh, it must be COVID. Maybe it’s too much stress at work.” When in actuality, it’s a pharmaceutical that they’re being told to inject into their arm over and over and over. And many of those diseases are literally landing people in their graves. Tinnitus, it’s a very simple word, but if you have tinnitus, your life is not lovely.
Mr. Jekielek:
That was one of the very strong safety signals in that report.
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. Robert Edmunds, he’s an injured scientist. He actually reached out to Tom Shimabukuro who’s basically the head of the vaccine program at the CDC. He reached out to him and identified tinnitus as a safety signal. He said, “Look, this is a problem. I found the data.” He was very objective, very calm and calculated with how he presented the information, and Tom brushed it aside.
The CDC didn’t want to hear from this individual who was suffering from this issue firsthand and had identified the safety signal. Instead, what they did everything they could to hide him and hide the information that he was bringing. In addition, the CDC went and investigated for tinnitus itself, found a very strong signal, and hid that as well. And that’s just one example of the 500.
Mr. Jekielek:
I cut you off a little bit earlier about Tinnitus. It sounds like something that’s not a big deal to people that aren’t experiencing a severe version of it. But you were going to talk about what impact that can have on people.
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. Tinnitus is just one example of these life-altering injuries that are not clots. You can’t see tinnitus on a test. But it’s life altering. If you could imagine when you’re laying your head down at night to go to sleep and the room’s quiet, or you might hear the fan moving or some sound from outside, imagine instead if you hear screaming in your head all the time.
It doesn’t go away, and it doesn’t wane. It’s always there. So, instead of being met with peace at night and being able to unwind, you’re instead met with a screaming, loud screeching in your head. Your peace is robbed of you for the rest of your life. On top of that, there’s no one to answer for that.
If people cannot rest, if they cannot find peace, if they cannot find a reprieve, if their families have turned their backs on them, if their peers have turned their backs on them, as well as the medical community, it puts that person in a very vulnerable situation. At React, we’ve been doing everything we can to save lives. Everything.
But the sad reality is we haven’t been able to save everyone. And there’s some people that have made the ultimate choice to end their suffering. Tinnitus is a big one. I want to say probably 30, 35 percent of the people that do end their lives, it’s because of tinnitus.
Mr. Jekielek:
This subject, I know we’ve talked a bit offline about this, it’s not academic for you.
Ms. Dressen:
No, it’s not. No. This one is hard and it’s personal. It’s one of those things nobody wants to talk about. I definitely don’t like to talk about it, but it’s personal. I suffered with the suicidal intention for months. With the vaccine reaction it’s not like it’s fleeting. It’s not like it’s a moment in time where you’ve had a couple of bad days and then it’s over.
When I was in that situation, I hadn’t slept for months. I had the raging tinnitus, the electrical sensations all over my body, which I still have to this day, every moment of every day. My brain fog was off the charts. I couldn’t eat. You could see every single rib in my body. I’d lost so much weight because I just couldn’t eat. I was one step away from having a feeding tube. They put me on marijuana. They did everything to try to get me to be able to keep weight on and to be able to consume food.
I was not in a good place. I remember waking up every single day, and still to this day, I wake up every single morning to this electrical surging through my body. That’s what greets me every morning. It was hard to cope with that. It was hard to learn to live with that. There was not a time where I could rest. There was no joy for even a minute in my day.
That went on for months to the point where it was like, “What’s the point?” And so, I wanted to be done, and I had a plan. I wrote goodbye letters to my kids. Sorry. I’ll never forgive myself for that, for almost destroying their lives. But at the time, I couldn’t think it through. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking about them.
But I hid it. I was ashamed. I didn’t tell people about it. I overcame that issue and I learned to accept it, but it was really, really, hard. It’s still something that I work on all the time. Look, I have a choice every day when I wake up. I have a choice to accept that my body sucks and it hurts, and all these weird things are going on. And I can accept that.
It doesn’t mean that I’m okay with it, but it means that I can accept it and say, “Yes, this is part of my life, but my kids need X, Y, Z, and the injured need A, B, C.” And if I’m trapped, and if all I’m doing is being miserable and suffering inside my head, I’m not doing any of them any good. I’m also not doing myself any good, because then there goes all my healing energy for myself.
It took a long time to evolve from my life is wrecked, it sucks, to what it is now, where I need to fight, I need to stick with it. It doesn’t matter how bad this gets, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that my life means something and that I’m there for my kids. But I hid that. I hid that whole process because I was so embarrassed.
It’s humiliating to think that you are brought to your knees to the point where you want nothing more than to just be dead. Nobody wants to admit that they were that vulnerable and that their life was that bad, because it’s seen as a weakness. But that’s not what it is.
I had a friend, and this is when I realized that I couldn’t hide it anymore. I had a really good friend who was injured. She was a COVID long hauler for a long time. Then, she got vaccinated hoping that would fix the long haul, because that was the promise and the lie that it would fix long haul. Instead, it made her dramatically worse. We talked every day. And she ended up ending her life. Her husband called and told me that she was on life support. I’ll never forget that call, because I had just barely come out of that place in my own head.
The last words she told me were, “You’re so strong.” When she said that, I was taken back and embarrassed, because I knew where I just was in my head. I knew where I was, just almost about ready to check out. I didn’t say anything to her. I just said, “Thank you.” But in reality, what I should have told her is just how bad it was.
I should have told her the journey that I had just been on myself. I should have told her just how hard it was. Because then maybe that would’ve given her the reason to hang on. Maybe that would’ve given her a little bit of the understanding that, “Look, I’m not strong. I’m just like you. I’m just like anyone else. I’m just doing my best and yes, it sucks.”
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you for sharing that here. I can’t help but think that in your case, you actually have a very supportive family. And despite that, it was so horrible. I just can hardly imagine what it would be like for people whose family members may not believe them, because they’ve been told safe and effective. No chance of this. It’s just in your head.
Ms. Dressen:
When it comes down to it, literally, that’s the only reason I’m alive is because my husband believed me and validated me, and he stood by me every step of the way. Had I not had that support, I would have been done, no question. There’s no question. My kids would not have had a mom. Their lives would be ruined, the whole thing. We would not be sitting here today.
The vast majority of the people that do complete suicide in the COVID vaccine injury world, they do not have a supportive family. I think we’re at 27, or 28 now, and could be upwards of 30. There are only two that I know of that were from families that were supportive and watching them. The rest were people that their family members had walked away.
There was a woman who was a medical professional with a beautiful family, and adult children. Her husband left her because of the burden, because she was trapped in her bed. She wasn’t getting better. And so, he left her, and he told the adult kids, “You guys are going to be stuck here caring for your mom until she dies, so you better get out.” So, the kids left.
She went and found a way to do it that was sanctioned by the Canadian government. She went through with it and ended her life. I know that people see that as just a number, but that’s a real human being. That’s someone that deserved better, and that’s someone that deserved to have some dignity and some respect. She didn’t have any choice into what happened to her.
Just like a cancer patient. Cancer patients gets their diagnosis, they’re sat down with their family members and their medical teams, and they say, “Okay, here’s a plan. Family, this is how you can support this person.” The opposite is happening here. You get a reaction, and boom, you’re done. There’s no help for you. The help that you do get, it’s going to be from random people you find on the internet that just happen to have the secrets from the NIH.
Mr. Jekielek:
I hope it’s okay, but I want to explore this because you mentioned this woman was in Canada where it has one of the most liberal medically assisted suicide regimes, and getting more liberal this year coming up. I’m aware of at least one instance where someone was vaccine injured and was offered MAID, as it’s called, as a solution. It’s hard for me to describe the series of thoughts I had when I learned about this. I don’t know if you have any thoughts.
Ms. Dressen:
Obviously, it’s wrong and it’s corrupt and it’s evil. And that’s one thing that COVID has done. Really what COVID has done is it has exposed evil. It’s brought evil to the surface wherever it’s been hiding, and this is one of those cases. You have real people that are dealing with a real disease and instead of addressing the issue, because the people responsible, the drug companies, they’re absolved from being obligated to fix the problems with their drug.
Then, the cheapest way to take care of the issue is to dispose of the people, to erase them and erase their voices. The sad thing is we’ve seen this time and time again with the suicides is once you’re gone, there’s no one there that’s going to step in and be your voice. Once you’re gone that’s it.
No one’s going to stand out with a flag with your name on it and wave it to try to bring justice for you. Because most of these people that do this, their families are not on board. If people want justice for themselves, they’ve got to bring justice for themselves alive. There’s no one that’s going to save them more than themselves.
That’s one of the things that the injured can do for each other is to help each other get through that, to get through those moments and get through that place, because you can. I know that because I’ve done it myself. There are times in my day where I can have joy now. My body is not a nightmare all the time every day. I’m able to spend time with my kids. I was able to go to my son’s little school parade, and I hadn’t been able to do that for two years. And he wasn’t expecting me to go.
And I tell you, he was the only 10-year-old kid in the entire school that cared that his mom was there. He just kept looking back at me like, “Oh, it’s you.” When he got home, he came straight up and gave me the biggest hug. And the rest of my day sucked. It hurt and it was miserable. But that moment right there made the whole day worth it.
Mr. Jekielek:
I might endeavor to add here that there’s a few other people around who appreciate your work and advocacy.
Ms. Dressen:
Hopefully. Well, powerful people aren’t too happy about it. The people that get involved with React 19, whether they’re injured or not—we hear it over and over and we have 65 volunteers at this point—they say the most gratifying work that they’ve ever done in their life has actually been through what they’ve been able to do through React 19.
These are people that have worked in ICUs. They’ve worked with marginalized populations in the past. They come from all corners of the globe, all shapes and sizes and professions. They’ve been able to find true satisfaction in being able to heal a population and help support a population that nobody else is helping. That’s been the same for me as well. These people are amazing.
The injured community are amazing people. Most of them didn’t get vaccinated to prove to somebody that what they were doing was right. They were doing it to help other people. They were doing it to help their communities, support their family members or whatever it may be. It wasn’t to say, “We’re right. The vaccines are great.” That’s not what people were doing.
Now, in their injuries, they’re doing the same. They really just want to help people and they want to help each other. They still want to help especially by providing the truth, so people don’t get forced to have these vaccines, especially with incomplete and flawed information. I’m going to do everything I can to support these people. They need the support.
Mr. Jekielek:
A lot of new information has come out, including this recent FOIA information. It’s still hard for me to fathom there are 500-plus safety signals. For the benefit of our viewers, that simply means if myocarditis warrants investigation, there’s 500-plus other things that warrant serious investigation. That’s what that means to me.
There’s a whole plethora of further information which has come out, including the V-safe data that Aaron Siri was able to get. We could go on and on. With React 19 and this advocacy for the vaccine injured, it feels like you’re in a very different place in the beginning of 2023 than the beginning of 2022 when we first met. What’s on the horizon?
Ms. Dressen:
We’ve got to get these people better, and we’ve got to get the truth out. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that investigations happen, and that people are held accountable, and that policies are changed. Our goals are to open care clinics across the country in 2023. We actually have a research grant program that just launched, and it’s a research match program. Any donation is matched up to $100,000 right now.
The reason why that’s so important is because, as you know, the federal research dollars are not going to evaluate the COVID vaccine issues. They’re not. For that research to happen, it’s going to have to be independently funded. If it’s not independently funded, it’s not going to happen. And just like everything else, the data is where the truth lies. Until we generate the data to show exactly what’s going on with the COVID vaccines and what adverse events are happening, and then also as a result to see how we can reverse some of these issues, we’re not going to have the truth.
To find the truth, it takes money. But then also we’re going to continue to build this injured community to involve those that are not just injured, but those that see the injuries and to see if we can figure out how to expand that to more of—as Joel Wallskog, my co-chair at React 19 says—the moldable middle. These are the people that if you’re with them in family functions or whatever, most people don’t talk about politics, they don’t talk about religion, and they don’t talk about vaccines.
But the thing is with most people, they know someone that’s been injured. I don’t think people realize that if you’re not supporting someone that you know that’s injured, most likely nobody else is either. The goal is to help people take that initiative to provide that support to someone that is injured, and that is suffering. Because sometimes they just need a phone call. Other times they need a little bit more. They may need a meal brought in or someone to come sit with them or take them to the doctor. But we can’t do it alone.
It’s just like with everything else that needs to happen as we reflect on the COVID tyranny, there’s a lot of justice that needs to come many people’s way. But the only way that justice is going to happen is if we band together. Separated, we’re going to fail. But together, we’re going to succeed.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s really interesting that you’re saying that there’s almost anyone out there that could actually provide a helping hand to someone who is suffering from some kind of injury or even a perception of an injury, even some of these people that are injured themselves. And because of this huge multi-billion-dollar information campaign that we’ve all been subject to, they might themselves not realize their own series of symptoms. They don’t realize that the doctors won’t diagnose it, yet they could be helped. How do we deal with that?
Ms. Dressen:
People are going to need to rise to the challenge. This is one of those opportunities for people to really realize that there’s some people that have been left behind and look around and see who those people are. It starts with a phone call to just listen and see what they need.
Mr. Jekielek:
We don’t even need to say vaccine injury.
Ms. Dressen:
Right.
Mr. Jekielek:
We don’t need to say, “I think you have that.” There’s a lot of people out there that didn’t have some really unfortunate collection of symptoms.
Ms. Dressen:
Checking in with somebody, this is how it goes with any disease. You just check in with them. Because out of sight, out of mind is a real thing. The government and Big Tech have been able to capitalize on that concept. All you have to do is make sure that people don’t see it, they don’t think about it, and therefore public pressure cannot be applied to get government to do their job. All they have to do is just eliminate that part of the equation and then the problem doesn’t exist. But now what’s happened is there are everyday people that they need that support.
Mr. Jekielek:
How is it that myocarditis was acknowledged, there’s maybe two or three things?
Ms. Dressen:
Yes. The FDA proudly acknowledges myocarditis based on six cases. With our meetings with Peter Marks, the head of biologics at the FDA, he’s the one that gives the rubber stamp on the licenses for the COVID vaccines, they take great pride in that number. We found myocarditis based on six cases. Well, what about all of these other signals? And just like we’ve said before, we pounded down those doors to gain access to those officials that were responsible for disclosing reactions to the public.
They said, “We’ve looked and looked and looked. We’ve really looked for adverse events and we just can’t find them.” Then come to find out, Zack Stieber was able to show and access the records that showed that that’s not true and that we were all lied to. In fact, they found 500 more safety signals that they should have disclosed to the public, not just a few.
In those 500 signals, there’s all of the issues that COVID vaccine injuries reflect. You’ve got dysautonomia, POTS [Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome], tinnitus, paresthesia, and facial and trigeminal issues. Who would have thought that this could be such a debilitating issue to have these nerves destroyed, but they’re debilitating. The government has not been transparent. They have not disclosed any of this to the public. In reality, in doing so, it has hidden us. It has kept us from public view. The media repeatedly has told us that they can’t report on COVID vaccine injuries. We have this on record.
If the corporate media is controlled by whoever is controlling them, and the government’s controlling the information and the flow of information, and the drug companies can control the flow of information because they’re a private entity, how are we going to win? We’re going to win by we the people stepping up and not accepting this situation that we’re in.
We the people have to step forward and demand better from our elected officials, from the pharmaceutical companies and from the media. Until we generate a public outcry from the ground up, policy will not shift. The pressure will not be applied, and they will come back and without question will do the same thing to people again under the sake of emergency. They’ll just wait for the next emergency to appear.
Mr. Jekielek:
It sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you.
Ms. Dressen:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
Brianne Dressen, it’s such a pleasure to have you on again.
Ms. Dressen:
Thanks for having me.
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Brianne Dressen and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. AstraZeneca and NIH did not immediately respond to our requests for comment.
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