New Study Aims to Learn More About COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries
Researchers are estimating thousands of people will participate.
A new study has been launched by researchers hoping to learn more about COVID-19 vaccine injuries.
“The primary goal of this project is to document the symptoms and treatments of people who have been injured by vaccines.” We hope to identify symptom patterns or clusters, as well as treatments that align with these symptom patterns or clusters, with enough participants,” Linda Wastila, director of research at the University of Maryland’s Peter Lamy Center on Drug Therapy and Aging, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“One of the most frustrating aspects of COVID-19 vaccine injury is the lack of medical and health acknowledgement, and the lack of knowledge of how to manage and treat symptoms,” she said.
The study is being led by Ms. Wastila, who has a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy, a master’s degree in public health, and a doctorate in health policy, with assistance from the vaccine-injured support group React19.
Participants will complete a survey that will take between 60 and 90 minutes to complete.
They will be questioned about their health prior to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine as well as the symptoms they experienced following vaccination. They will also be questioned about the tests they underwent, the diagnoses they received, and the treatments they received.
Participants must be at least 18 years old.
“We hope to use this data to publish patient-driven data about vaccine reactions in hopes of educating the medical community and other vaccine-injured individuals,” the company said on its website.
According to React19, the findings will be published in prestigious research journals.
There is no funding.
The study is not being funded; instead, Ms. Wastila and React19 volunteers are conducting it in their spare time.
Ms. Wastila stated that she does not believe such a study would be funded by the federal or state governments, and that obtaining funding from private sponsors would be difficult and time-consuming.
“Obtaining funding would also require significant time and effort, and the risks of not receiving funding are high.” “We don’t have a year or more to find out if our research proposals are funded,” Ms. Wastila said.
According to React19, the study was approved by an Institutional Review Board.
Researchers anticipate that thousands of people will participate in the study. As of Oct. 27, 995,000 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination had been filed with the US vaccine injury database.
“The data we receive will represent the most comprehensive and complete record of COVID-19 vaccine injured to date,” she said.
Early returns have revealed “interesting patterns,” according to React19, but they encourage more people to participate.
“You are not required to complete the survey in one sitting. “You can begin the survey and save your progress to continue later,” React19 explained.
Researchers are counting on respondents to provide honest answers. They will not attempt to verify the provided information.
Spur More Research?
The study’s findings may be able to identify treatments that have been successful.
“Our hope is that we will be able to aggregate symptoms with treatments, and ideally identify patterns of treatments most helpful in alleviating symptoms and improving health and quality of life,” she said.
She stated that the survey-based method was used “because there are NO available data—from other surveys, from administrative claims, from registries—that adequately acknowledge and/or account for these symptoms and treatments.”
According to React19, the survey could spark further research.
“We hope findings provide preliminary data for future funding to allow larger surveys and to provide direction for analyses using larger, already-collected data (such as health insurance data),” the company said.
For years, React19 members have been sharing their experiences with the group. They assisted each other in identifying immunoglobulin as an effective treatment for some vaccine injuries.
Members have been excluded by federal researchers and the United States government’s vaccine injury compensation program, prompting them to conduct their own research while also advocating for program reform on Capitol Hill and in a recent lawsuit.