Shill. Sheep. Cooker. Anti-vaxxer.

Michelle Hunder's been called many names in the past few years.

It all began when she started speaking publicly about the crippling chest pains she experienced after getting her COVID-19 vaccines.

"People who are really pro-vaccine would be like, 'You are lying. Or you're just a shill for the anti-vaxxers,'" she recalls.

"People that are really vehemently anti-vax would be like, 'You're a sheep, you're an idiot. This is what you get.'"

Michelle is part of a complex and controversial community who call themselves "the vaccine injured".

It formed mostly through online support groups for those experiencing adverse symptoms after a COVID-19 vaccine. Background Briefing has spoken with more than 30 members for this story.

Many say they've been unfairly lumped in with the anti-vaxxer movement, and met with disbelief and derision when seeking help for their symptoms.

For Michelle, this has been confusing.

She points to how she's not only received every immunisation required under Medicare, but also taken flu vaccines and those recommended for overseas travel.

Nearly four years since COVID-19 vaccines started being rolled out, the scientific consensus is still that their benefits — reducing the risk of severe disease, hospitalisation and death from the virus — far outweigh the possible risks.

Global research has now identified some of these side effects, such as the blood-clotting disorder linked to AstraZeneca's vaccine, or heart inflammation caused by Pfizer or Moderna.

Some of the "vaccine injured" have received diagnoses of these well-documented side effects. Others say they are living in a sort of grey area, experiencing a constellation of strange symptoms, even years after vaccination. These include conditions such as tinnitus, nerve pain and chronic fatigue.

None of these "grey area" symptoms are recognised by the medical establishment as side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, and those experiencing them aren't eligible for the compensation scheme that the government specially set up for the COVID-19 vaccines. Many people told Background Briefing they've been locked out of the scheme entirely and left with nowhere to turn for support.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-16/covid-vaccine-inconvenient-patients-astrazeneca-pfizer-lawsuit/104568434

MEANWHILE:

Americans are “not allowed” to talk freely about healthcare problems on US media and must go to Russian TV “to tell the truth,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told RT DE in Berlin in August 2020. He singled out RT America as the “only station” where he was free to express his opinion on the US healthcare system and its inadequacies.

Kennedy was an outspoken critic of the US Covid-19 response during the pandemic. Often accused of being an ‘anti-vaxxer’, he brushed off these claims, stressing that the only thing he opposed was administering drugs that have not been safety-tested.

Kennedy claimed that the entire US vaccine industry was “an artifact” of the old “quasi-military” public health system introduced during the Cold War as a “national security defense against biological attacks”by Russia. According to him, the laws regulating vaccines were written with a “loophole” that allowed pharmaceutical companies to forgo time-consuming safety tests if they did not call a drug a medicine. This was done in order to deploy vaccines quickly and with no regulatory impediments, but resulted in a “gold rush to put more vaccines on the table” as pharmaceutical companies “took advantage of that old military loophole” to boost profits.

“You know why people don’t know it? Because there’s censorship. I’m not allowed to talk about that on American TV… I do talk about it on RT America – it’s the only station that lets me talk about it,” he stated.

Very paradoxical but it’s true: RT America is the only place where we can talk about many of these subjects.

Kennedy said it was “ironic” that a Russian TV station looked to be the most free in the US, but not surprising.

“Unfortunately, US TV is owned by the pharmaceutical companies,” he stated, noting that ever since the US passed a law that made it legal to advertise prescription drugs on TV back in 1997, the influence of big pharma on media content has become all-encompassing.

“If you look at the evening news in the US, out of twenty two advertisements on a typical news show seventeen are pharmaceutical. So they’re dictating content,” he claimed, adding that this was the reason behind Americans “consuming more drugs than any country in the world”while still having “the worst health outcomes.”

“Pharmaceutical drugs are now the number three killer in the US after heart attacks and cancer, but nobody talks about it…. If people knew the truth, people would have a lot of questions about what we’re giving to our children… Unfortunately we have to go to Russian TV to tell the truth,” he stated.

Kennedy was nominated by US President-elect Donald Trump for the position of secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) earlier this week. If approved, he will oversee America’s major healthcare agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). A longtime critic of these agencies, he has promised major reforms in order to “make America healthy again.”

https://www.rt.com/news/607766-rfk-rt-us-media-censorship/

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