Advocates in Action: Branden Nail

Hello everyone! It is Amy Collen again, and this month I had the pleasure of interviewing Branden Nail who is the IT Development Manager with React19.

Before COVID came along, Branden didn’t give vaccines a second thought. In fact, the last vaccine he recalls receiving was as a child going into kindergarten. However, in 2021 his work required a vaccine in order to retain employment. They were given a 6 month deadline to do so or else they were terminated.

The people at his company tried their best to fight this policy, but the company was firm. Religious exemptions were denied, and if one wanted a medical exemption it was a long process involving dealing with a doctor and the company’s HR department, or was denied outright. As Branden recalls, “It didn’t matter if it was a religious exemption or what, it would get denied. Medical exemptions, even the first time they would be submitted, they would be denied.”

Branden received his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on April 6th and his second on April 27th of 2021. His reaction to the vaccine was not unusual. He had some hot flashes, burning at the injection site, but not much else. So he put it out of his mind.

However, on June 4, 2021 everything changed, and all he did was wake up in the morning. “I had a crick in my neck like what you would have if you slept on your neck wrong, within a couple of hours that blossomed into so much pain. [It was] so bad...I couldn’t eat, [and] I couldn’t sleep.”

Since his pain started on a Friday, he tried to wait out the weekend to see the doctor on Monday. After all, his wife was a nurse and he figured he was in good hands. Unfortunately, he was in such agony that he had to see a doctor on that Sunday, June 6th. He couldn’t wait.

The doctors thought he had shingles, but after doing an x-ray they determined something was wrong with his spine. They sent him home with antibiotics and pain medicine but his symptoms did not resolve. A further MRI showed worse problems. According to Branden’s bio on the React19 site he was diagnosed with “degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, herniated discs, pinched nerves, and more.” All this from a previously healthy and fit person, with no known health problems.

The doctors decided to perform an emergency ACDF (Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion) surgery on July 1st, pending approval of Branden’s insurance. During this time, from the initial onset of pain to his surgery a month later, Branden lost 44 pounds. He went from 214 pounds down to 170 pounds. This was due to overwhelming pain which prevented him from sleeping or eating.

On July 1st Branden went in for surgery, with the optimism and reassurance of his doctors. They told him he would experience pain upon awakening, but it would be a different and temporary pain. Once he recovered from surgery he would be, in their words, “a new man.”

Branden woke up from surgery in agony. He hadn’t even recovered from the anesthesia yet. Not only did he feel the new pain from surgery, he still felt the initial debilitating pain. In other words, nothing changed except now he could feel everything they did on his neck.

A more ominous injury also occurred. This was a sort of traveling pain that felt like an actual thing circulating through his body. Branden explains it best:

“I can literally feel this stuff as it happens to me and it is like I have something growing in my body or inside my bloodstream and I can feel this... as it is moving around my body, whatever is going on, causing all these symptoms... I can feel it moving around my bloodstream... I can feel it around my legs, around my toes..... it is one feeling in different locations.... whether it be a minute or an hour.... but I literally feel it until it gets to my back. That's when I stop feeling it and usually within 10 minutes of that is when.... my eyes start watering, [and] my brain starts getting this massive internal pressure suffocation.”

Obviously, this made it difficult for Branden to work sufficiently at his job, since it also affected how his brain processed information. His brain can seemingly shut down if he is trying to do something like trying to listen to two people talking at once. Also, he could break down in tears, or experience out of control anger. When incidents like this occur it takes him about an hour or so to recover.

Branden had no idea what was going on with him and neither did doctors. He went in for numerous blood tests, often 3 times a day. Doctors would see massive numbers of Creatine Kinase (CK) and myoglobin serum. (CK is an enzyme found in various tissues and is released in your bloodstream when muscles, whether that be skeletal or cardiac, are damaged. Myoglobin is a protein that is also released in your body when muscle cells are damaged, and is an early indicator of cardiac muscle damage). He was sent home on a heart monitor for ten days with a push button event monitor to track symptoms, and recorded 463 events. As Brandon says, “Imagine my shock when the doctor’s report stated my heart was functioning as it should!”

Branden had no idea this could be a vaccine injury. He was only able to connect the dots when his daughter received her own COVID vaccine later that year. She immediately developed Bell's Palsy and to this day still has 3% paralyzation on one side of her face.

Branden started doing more in depth searches online, and eventually found his way to FLCCC’s Dr. Jordan Vaughn. Miraculously, Dr. Vaughn’s office happened to be just a short drive from Brandon’s home.

Branden’s first visit was quite memorable. Dr. Vaughn’s Nurse Practitioner took one look at Branden and gave him a big hug. Branden remembers it fondly, “When she walked in and...started talking to me she started to ask a question. Then when she turned and looked at me, I guess she [saw] how bad off I looked and she just hugged me...She just put her arms around me and hugged me. And of course that caused me to bawl, which caused her to bawl.”

Dr. Vaughn took x-rays of Branden’s lungs and found them filled with microclots. He started Branden on the FLCCC protocol which included Ivermectin, a drug Branden had never heard about, nor had he heard of the FLCCC protocol. He didn’t know any of this, until his daughter was vaccine injured. It caused him to question his own intelligence. After all, he knew how to find information online, and he knew how to do proper searches. Yet, something like this regarding the vaccine had never come up. That was the extent of censorship regarding vaccine injuries.

Branden made up his mind to do something about it. He filed a VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) report. Next, Branden, along with 3 friends, started donating time and compiling data to sites like, “How’s my Batch” to track batch numbers and injuries. He then began volunteering with React19, adding his much needed expertise in handling computers and cyber security.

Branden utilizes every free moment he has, aside from his full time job and family duties, to dedicate himself to the cause of React19. As he says, “I have an unwavering commitment to seek to prevent the recurrence of similar challenges, and I will continue to participate in the ongoing fight for a safer and more informed future.”

I ended the interview by asking him how people could help. Branden called for more donations but also the need for more volunteers, “The bigger we can create our family here...it lessens the chance that anything like this will ever happen again...Information is power especially when you live through what we’ve just lived through.”

Thank you, Branden, for volunteering your time and expertise with React19. You bring much needed information to those seeking help or information about vaccine injuries. Your volunteer efforts have proved invaluable.