News from The BMJ: US Compensation Scheme

From The BMJ:

Patients and lawyers say that America’s system for covid vaccine injury claims is costly, opaque, and yet to issue a single payout. Maryanne Demasi reports: “My toes move constantly, 24 hours a day, uncontrollably back and forth,” says Chris Dreisbach, a 44 year old attorney who was admitted to hospital with debilitating neurological symptoms after a second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine in March 2021. “I often spend at least four hours a day in my bathtub, because a hot bath is the only way I can turn down this electrical sensation that pulses through me. The cognitive issues are worse. I used to pride myself on being able to get up in a courtroom and think on my feet. Now, I have this brain fog. It’s embarrassing.” From his hospital bed Dreisbach began researching compensation schemes, only to discover that the US’s national Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) was not available to people injured by covid-19 vaccines. Instead he was forced to lodge a claim with a more costly, opaque, and less generous system that has yet to pay out on a single claim for covid vaccines. Senators, lawyers, doctors, and others such as Dreisbach are questioning why patients injured by vaccines are being routed into a scheme they view as inferior.