By Guy Page
If you think you’re a victim of vaccine injury but the doctors won’t give you any diagnosis for your mysterious condition, tell the CDC and seek more medical opinions, Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine advised during a press conference Tuesday.
Greg Robbins of St. Johnsbury described in Monday’s Vermont Daily Chronicle how four weeks after he received a Moderna vaccine, his left knee began to swell inexplicably. Symptoms got worse after the second dose. Neither his primary care doctor nor an orthopedist could explain the cause of the swelling. And they didn’t want to discuss the possibility of a vaccine injury, he said.
Robbins reported the condition to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). He received a phone call from VAERS but as yet no word about whether he is a vax injury victim.
This is not surprising, given that the CDC is taking a wait-and-see, low-key approach to Moderna vaccine injury, at least on its website. The closest suggestion of a link between Robbins’ condition and Moderna vaccination is in this website statement on reported serious adverse reactions: “The possibility that the vaccine contributed to the serious adverse event reports of rheumatoid arthritis….cannot be excluded.”
Robbins’ dilemma was raised at Gov. Phil Scott’s press conference Tuesday.
Vermont Daily Chronicle: “What do you recommend, or perhaps does Dr. Levine recommend, to someone who reasonably thinks, ‘I have had a reaction to a vaccine,’ but the health system will not respond to them, and give them any sort of answers either pro or con?”
“From my perspective, I would see another doctor to confirm the first doctor’s opinion,” Scott said. “But, Dr. Levine?”
The lanky Health Commissioner then stepped to the microphone.
“He’s done some of the right things,” Levine said. “He’s made an encounter with the health care system, presented his case, and looked for an opinion. He didn’t get the one he wanted. Now I’m sure his case has been submitted through the [VAERS] reporting system so it will get vetting at the level of the CDC, because there may be others like him who have had similar symptoms.
“That’s how this process works. There are plausible and biologically implausible explanations for various types of symptoms and reactions. If he has an extraordinarily unique one, people will weigh in on that, based on their experience with this vaccine and other vaccines.
“But he can certainly seek other opinions within the health care system, as the governor alluded to, which would mean people depending on the symptom who are in the specialty that that symptom may fall within, or perhaps in the allergy or immunology spectrum, if it’s really looking for a kind of immune reaction to the vaccine etc.. That’s about all I can give you for now.”