1 in 10 Adults Seriously Injured by a COVID Vaccine, New Survey Says
The vaccine-injured haven’t gone anywhere. They're still hurting, dying and being discarded as trash.
This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
Roughly 10% of all U.S adults who received the COVID-19 vaccine experienced “major” side effects, and over a third (36%) had “minor” side effects, according to a national survey conducted this month. Kristi Dobbs, who was seriously injured by Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot, told The Defender that the vaccine-injured are “still hurting, dying and being discarded as trash.”
One in every 10 U.S adults who received the COVID-19 vaccine experienced “major” side effects, and over a third (36%) suffered “minor” side effects, according to a national survey conducted this month.
Based on a U.S. adult population of 258 million in 2020, the results mean that about 17 million adults who got the COVID-19 vaccine experienced major health effects, and roughly 63 million had minor side effects, said Rasmussen Reports, which conducted the survey.
The survey, which included 1,292 adults and had a margin sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% confidence level, also revealed that 46% of both vaccinated and unvaccinated adults think it’s likely that COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths.
The numbers come as no surprise to Christopher Dreisbach, legal affairs director of React19, whose mission is to support the COVID-19 vaccine-injured. He told The Defender:
“Any surprise regarding the frequency and severity of these adverse reactions is simply the result of years of government and platform-level censorship that kept the injured’s experiences out of public view.”
Dreisbach was diagnosed with a debilitating and painful neurological disorder after getting Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Kristi Dobbs, who was also seriously injured when she took her first and only Pfizer COVID-19 shot on Jan. 18, 2021, said the U.S. government has yet to ensure that this kind of massive vaccine injury won’t happen again in the future.
With the exceptions of U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who have been outspoken on COVID-19 vaccine injuries, most government officials are “hoping we will just be silenced and forgotten about,” Dobbs said.
She said she and others have been “shouting from the rooftops” since February 2021, when a group of them warned the National Institutes of Health that the shots were causing massive harm.
Since then, Dobbs has personally contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Stanford University and the Mayo Clinic.
“My cries have fallen on deaf ears for years,” she said. “The vaccine-injured are still hurting, dying and being discarded as trash.”
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Nikki Holland, REACT19’s community outreach officer, who was injured by a COVID-19 vaccine, said, “This is happening to real people in every community, not rare statistics. If we refuse to honestly recognize and investigate these injuries, we undermine the very principles that keep medicine evolving and patients safe.”
As of Aug. 29, 2025, there have been 1,666,646 COVID-19 vaccine injury reports filed in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), according to OpenVAERS. Of those, over 220,000 were serious enough to warrant hospitalization, and nearly 39,000 were reports of death. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
Adding to the underreporting of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, last month, an investigation by The Defender revealed that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA — the government agency that oversees workplace safety — directed healthcare employers not to report injuries related to COVID-19 vaccines, which were mandated for the workers.
Less than 0.3% of COVID injury claims compensated
An investigation in August by attorney Ray Flores and The Defender found that over 1.5 million people who reported COVID-19 injuries to the U.S. government’s compensation program were shut out from applying for compensation.
That’s because the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) — which processes COVID-19 injury claims — won’t accept applications from people who experience the most common, non-severe injuries.
Of those who can submit a claim, the odds are slim that they will be compensated quickly, sufficiently, or at all. As of June 1, CICP had received 13,836 COVID-19 vaccine injury claims and had compensated only 39 — less than 0.3%.
In June, Kennedy said in an interview with Tucker Carlson that he plans to beef up the government’s compensation efforts for the COVID-19 vaccine-injured, possibly by bringing COVID-19 vaccines under the federal vaccine injury compensation program that processes injury claims related to the other vaccines listed on the CDC schedule — not COVID-19 vaccines, which are still classified as a pandemic countermeasure, covered under the CICP.
“We just brought a guy in this week who is going to be revolutionizing the [National] Vaccine Injury Compensation program,” Kennedy told Carlson. “We’re looking at ways to enlarge the program so that COVID vaccine-injured people can be compensated.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond when asked what steps Kennedy has taken since then.
Sen. Johnson ‘black-sheeped’ for spotlighting COVID vaccine injury
It may be increasingly difficult to overlook those injured by the COVID-19 vaccine, as there’s evidence their numbers are growing.
Dr. Joseph Varon, president and chief medical officer of the Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), noted in a Substack post about the Rasmussen survey that IMA doctors are now reporting a “marked rise in heart inflammation, unusual cancers, and other concerning conditions” among COVID-19 mRNA vaccine recipients.
The IMA, formerly the FLCCC or Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, is a nonprofit created to “save lives and promote long-term wellness through science-based, patient-centered care.”
“We are still only beginning to understand how mRNA interacts with the body,” Varon wrote. “This is why the COVID mandate period was so troubling for healthcare.”
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said he manages a “never-ending stream of patients with new diseases that have developed after COVID-19 vaccination.”
Dobbs said she was grateful that Johnson, who chairs the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in May held a hearing on the cover-up of COVID-19 vaccine risks. “But Johnson has been black-sheeped over the years, too,” she added.
Nearly five years of fighting to be heard has taken its toll, she said. “We have lost many to suicide and cancers.”
Still, Dobbs said she’s going to keep fighting to make things better for future generations. “We will be seen, heard and believed.”
Related articles in The Defender
Over 1.5 Million People Who Reported COVID Vaccine Injuries Shut Out From Applying for Compensation
HHS to ‘Revolutionize’ Vaccine Injury Compensation, RFK Jr. Tells Tucker Carlson
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