Wayne Rohde, an expert in vaccine injury compensation, said many are asking whether this large payment is a sign that under the Trump administration, more and higher compensation will be granted to vaccine-injured people.
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. But it does mean that there’s a lot of people who are severely injured and need proper medical care, and they’re not getting it.”
Rohde said the award also “serves as a notice to our elected officials that they need to get their act together and figure out what to do with these thousands of people that have filed petitions and are just pending.”
Rohde, who is also the author of “The Vaccine Court: The Dark Truth of America’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program,” said that in the two months since the last CICP-approved payment had been posted, the program had only processed six awards — and it dismissed about 140.
Dr. Joel Wallskog, a Wisconsin orthopedic surgeon injured by Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, said these numbers demonstrate that CICP is a “dismal failure.” It is supposed to be a safety net for the vaccine injured, he said, but there is a 98% denial rate.
“The CICP budget for 2025 is $10 million dollars — $1 million for actual injuries, and $9 million for administrative costs of the program,” he said. “Can you imagine a private business that actually budgets for 90% overhead? It would be out of business.”
Wallskog, who serves on the board of React19, an advocacy group representing thousands of vaccine-injured people, added:
“In my opinion, this is evidence of our government and federal regulatory agencies abusing the COVID-19 vaccine-injured community. They will continue to do whatever necessary to dismiss us, censor us, and downplay our injuries.
“We are the COVID-19 vaccines’ dirty little secret no one wants to talk about. We at React19 know that we will not stop fighting until the injured get adequate care and fair and just compensation.”
The group has created its own fund to support vaccine-injured people neglected by the government.
‘CICP was never designed to handle a nationwide long-term pandemic’
The CICP was established under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which protects pharmaceutical companies from liability for all injuries sustained from “countermeasures,” including vaccines and other medications — administered during a public health emergency.
Unlike the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which covers injuries arising from vaccines routinely administered to children and pregnant women, the CICP — in the few cases where it does make awards — pays only for unreimbursed medical expenses and up to $50,000 per year for lost wages.
“You’re not going to get reimbursed because you lost your home in foreclosure,” Rohde said. “You’re not going to get reimbursed because your spouse left you. You’re not going to get reimbursed because your child committed suicide because they couldn’t handle the pain that you’re going through — those things that destroy the family. Those are costs that we can’t even address.”
Rohde said this is in part because the program was designed as a short-term solution for natural disasters, hurricanes, wildfires and other regional issues.
“The CICP was never designed to handle a nationwide long-term pandemic or outbreak,” Rohde said. “Never.”
The program has limited funding, a one-year statute of limitations and is a purely administrative process — people cannot argue their case in court, he said. It is rife with issues that make it ill-equipped to handle injuries on the scale of those caused by the COVID-19 vaccines.
Wallskog said most people don’t even have a diagnosis within a year of injury. The program doesn’t cover legal costs, and the process isn’t transparent.
He said:
“The biggest weakness with the CICP is the burden of proof required for a claim to be approved and accepted. A temporal relationship between your shot and your adverse event cannot be used as proof of causation.
“Seventy percent of vaccine injuries occur within the first 7 days after COVID-19 vaccination. However, this can’t be used to support your claim. That is ridiculous.”
He said the program is “deliberately deficient by design,” and that all the denials, including his own, inform people that “there is not compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine directly caused your injury.”
When dealing with a novel virus and vaccine, those restrictions place an unreasonable burden of proof on the injured, he said. “We are in the largest clinical trial in world history. We are learning more every day about the vaccines, their ineffectiveness and their associated adverse events.”
Attorney Ray Flores, senior outside counsel for Children’s Health Defense, and expert on the PREP Act and government vaccine injury compensation programs, told The Defender that this situation is set to continue for a long time.
“Everyone thinks COVID-19 Public Health Emergency is over,” Flores said. “That is only partly true. The emergency may be over, but protections for COVID-19 vaccines and other countermeasures remain in place for almost five more years, and could possibly be extended past that.”
Flores added:
“The PREP Act is Public Enemy No. 1. It lays the groundwork for dangerous experimental substances to be injected without the manufacturer standing by anything it says or does when designing, making and marketing these products.”
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