"... Public health officials, cowed by the anti-vax crowd, [have] stuck to the line that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. And an existing system to address people injured by vaccines, established under President Ronald Reagan, has been all but abandoned.
... [The] 'nothing to see here' posture regarding legitimate vaccine side effects is preventing government from... following up on flaws in the products...
... There’s a process in place to handle this problem [of vaccine injury]. After vaccine makers were given immunity from lawsuits to encourage product development, the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). The program allows individuals harmed by vaccines to share what happened to them and receive compensation funded by a modest excise tax on vaccines...
Unfortunately, that perfectly sensible system has been eclipsed by a flawed and hastily arranged program put in place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks: the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, or CICP.
... Many claims have been summarily rejected [by CICP], and aside from one recent large award, administrative masters had compensated a grand total of 15 individuals for less than $60,000...
So why not make the COVID-19 vaccines eligible under the NVICP, the program that has worked so much better? To do so requires an act of Congress, and pandemic politics has put everything at a standstill."
This article was originally published by Harvard Public Health.
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