[Theme Music Starts]

RUBY:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

There’s a group of people who during our most recent public health crisis felt completely abandoned: those who suffered vaccine injuries.

It’s a rare event but it happens. And during the pandemic those that it happened to say they were deserted, by their friends, health services, and ultimately the government who they say failed to deliver on its promised compensation scheme.

And when a system like that fails, a vacuum is left, which can be filled by misinformation, and conspiracy.

Today, reporter at the ABC’s Background Briefing, Maddison Connaughton, on the shortcomings of the covid vaccination compensation scheme, and what it means for public trust.

It’s Thursday, November 21.

[Theme Music Ends]

RUBY:

Maddison, Hello. It's great to have you on the show.

MADDISON:

Hey, Ruby.

RUBY:

So we're talking about people who got vaccinated for COVID-19, as we were all asked to do during the pandemic. But for these people, something went wrong after they did that. So can you tell me more about the people that you spoke to and what they say happened?

MADDISON:

So a lot of our reporting focuses on this woman named Michelle, Michelle Hunder. She's actually a really sought after music photographer. So she's worked with Australian musicians like Ruel and Amy Shark, A.B Original, travelled the world, shot magazine covers, album covers. And she described herself to us as someone who'd never had issues before with vaccines.

Audio Excerpt - Michelle Hunder

“I've taken every vaccine that has ever existed that we were able to take up until this point. You know, like it's I've travelled to different places where you've had to take stuff.”

MADDISON:

But she was pretty upfront that she had some questions around the COVID vaccines, particularly because I'm sure you remember the news that there was like this blood clotting issue that was coming up with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“There is more information tonight about the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and those reports about rare cases of blood clots.”

MADDISON:

So she said that that was like in her mind when she was deciding on getting vaccinated.

Audio Excerpt - Michelle Hunder:

“And I remember being relieved that we were eligible for Pfizer at the time.”

MADDISON:

And she ended up getting the Pfizer vaccine, which most Australians did. And she told us that a few days after that she started experiencing some heart symptoms when she was lying in bed, pretty intense chest pains as well. And she said she contacted a friend of hers who was a nurse and the nurse was like, you know, go to hospital, they'll check you out and let you know if anything's wrong. They ran some tests and nothing, you know, concerning was popping up. And so she was sent home. But the episodes just kept happening.

You know, she couldn't even walk upstairs without the heart rate spiking. So it was really impacting her life. She went back to the hospital again. Nothing was showing up that was of concern. And then after she got her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, this pattern sort of happened again.

Audio Excerpt - Michelle Hunder:

“And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, heart rate spike, just this crippling chest pain.”

MADDISON:

And that's when she told us she started to think that this might be linked to the vaccine. And so the third time she went to hospital, she told hospital staff that that was her suspicion. She was sort of pulled into a side room by a nurse who told her that she should seek therapy for her anxiety. And that was pretty shocking for Michelle. She said she felt like she'd shown up to a hospital trying to get help for these symptoms that were really scaring her. And she was just being told like it's in your head.

Audio Excerpt - Michelle Hunder:

“I just felt like at my lowest, most vulnerable point in my life when I felt like I was going to die. This woman is telling me I'm crazy. Like I can't express to you what that feels like. So I just got up and left, and I just remember walking out into the street hysterically crying, going, I don't know what to do.”

RUBY:

Where did she turn to next?

MADDISON:

So, I mean, Michelle did what a lot of people do when it comes to health questions these days. She went online and she kind of described going down the rabbit hole to ask on Reddit to something on Twitter, to Facebook groups, finding other people who had quite similar stories to her. And when she was on these groups and she was looking online, there was also just so much conspiracy theory content. And, you know, there was anti-vaccine content. And Michelle said that she really had to make a choice not to engage with that stuff, not to get sort of sucked in.

The other thing that was really interesting about what happened to Michelle is that she had a pretty big online following. And she started talking about what she was experiencing. And she said that the reaction to that was kind of totally unexpected.

Audio Excerpt - Michelle Hunder:

“People that are like, really, really pro-vaccine would be like, You are lying. Where's your proof? Or just like you are just a shill for the anti-vaxxers.”

MADDISON:

At the same time, though, she was like, I was also copping it from anti-vaxxers.

RUBY:

And so did Michelle manage to get a diagnosis in the end? And was her condition connected to the vaccine that she received?

MADDISON:

Yeah. So eventually she got in to see a cardiologist who determined that her condition was in line with what we're seeing with vaccine induced pericarditis. And so pericarditis is an inflammation of the heart. And it's a really well-established side effect of MRNA, COVID vaccines. So it's not a controversial diagnosis, but it is very rare.

RUBY:

Okay. And so when we're talking about this group of people that Michelle is one of people who suffered a vaccine injury during COVID. How many people are we talking about here and how serious can the consequences be?

MADDISON:

Yeah. So the big picture is like when we say rare, we do mean rare. Only 16 people in Australia died from a COVID vaccine out of more than 68 million doses that were delivered. So again, rare. Katie Lees was actually one of these sixteen people. So we actually spoke to Katie's parents, Penny and Ian. And Katie's parents actually have a letter from New South Wales Health that confirms that she died from the rare clotting disorder that was caused by her AstraZeneca vaccine. And I think the thing that was quite surprising about their story was the reaction that they got from people when speaking about what had happened to Katie.

Audio Excerpt - Penny Lees:

“Katie loved performance. Independent theatre was a very big part of her life. The thing that gave her energy and a smile on her face was performing.”

MADDISON:

Penny told us about the fact that they set up this fellowship in Katie's memory that was to help other young women who loved theatre. But the local council that was helping with some of the funding for the fellowship pushed back really hard on including Katie's cause of death on the website.

Audio Excerpt - Penny Lees:

“They said because we're a pro-vaccine organisation, we don't want you to actually put that. Katie died from the AstraZeneca vaccine.”

MADDISON:

which Penny found really hard to hear. It sort of made her feel like she was being cast as an anti-vaxxer just for talking about what had happened to her daughter.

And they applied through the compensation scheme that the government had set up for COVID19 vaccines. And through that scheme they were awarded $70,000 for Katie's death. And Penny told us that that figure was really galling for them. And she felt like it just reflected that the government had absolutely no understanding of the impact that Katie's death had on their family.

Audio Excerpt - Penny Lees:

“That was the most insulting thing. That was very hard to accept. We felt really, really angry, really let down and deserted.”

RUBY:

After the break – how Australia’s vaccine compensation scheme fell short of its promises.

[Advertisement]

RUBY:

Maddison, I want to talk more about the COVID-19 vaccine compensation scheme. What was promised? And how does that compare in terms of what played out and what was actually offered in the end?

MADDISON:

Yeah. So this compensation scheme is really interesting. It was set up by the Federal Government for the COVID vaccines during the pandemic, and it's actually the first time Australia has ever had a compensation scheme like this for vaccines, despite the fact that experts have been asking for one since the 1980s is what we were told.

But when we were doing these interviews with people, we found that a lot of people were not eligible for the scheme. So it looks like about 8% of claims have been approved at this point. I mean, take Michelle. Right. So a cardiologist determined that what she was likely dealing with was vaccine induced pericarditis. So that's one of the recognised conditions you can apply to the scheme under. But when Michelle went to look online and see if she was eligible, she found out that she couldn't apply because she'd never been hospitalised.

RUBY:

Right. But she'd gone to hospital. They just hadn't admitted her.

MADDISON:

Yeah, she'd gone to hospital three times. She showed up to emergency, but she'd never been admitted to hospital and therefore she's not eligible. The other eligibility element for that compensation scheme is much more controversial. There are ten conditions that are eligible under the scheme. People that are experiencing other things are not eligible. So sometimes these are referred to as like grey area symptoms. They're things that people started experiencing after their vaccine, but research has not linked them to a COVID-19 side effect. Those people can't apply for the compensation scheme.

We spoke to a lot of experts for this story and one that sort of spoke quite instructively about the compensation scheme is a guy called Marco Rizzi who's an associate professor of law at the University of Western Australia. He said that best practice around the world doesn't sort of knit causation and eligibility together in the way that Australia's scheme did.

Instead, they take what he described as like a most probable cause approach, which means that people don't necessarily have to prove causality for their claim. It helps people feel heard, But he also said that, you know, a functioning compensation scheme can steer people away from litigation.

You know, thrashing out in court whether a vaccine caused X, Y, Z that can actually have ripple effects for public trust in vaccination, which you don't want to do. But in Australia there has been litigation that's been launched. So there's a class action that was launched last year.

According to the lawyers that are running it, more than 1900 people have signed on their interest to take part in the action.

RUBY:

Right. And Maddison, do you get the sense that the reason that these people were overlooked or not listened to, is because to talk too much about the possibility of harm being caused by a vaccine, that was seen as dangerous particularly during the peak of COVID. So was there this element of, you know, let’s not give this too much attention, because we need everyone to focus on the greater good?

MADDISON:

Yeah, from Nick Coatsworth’s perspective, you know, serving as deputy chief medical officer during the pandemic, he certainly felt that because the focus was the rollout and there was a fear of, you know, scaring people off getting vaccinated, that there were people that weren't listened to when they should have been.

Audio Excerpt - Nick Coatsworth:

“I don't think that there were hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of deaths caused by the vaccine. I want to make that absolutely clear. But I do think that there were significant numbers of people who were likely dismissed when they should have been heard.”

MADDISON:

From Michelle's perspective, as someone who went through this, she definitely felt like that was the case, that she was being ignored because it wasn't convenient.

Audio Excerpt - Michelle Hunder:

“We were collateral damage for the greater good. That's the part that's really hard to swallow, is that there's a human toll that they know about that is not acknowledged.”

MADDISON:

This is a relatively small group of people that's important to keep in mind. But it does seem like there are, you know, wider ramifications for trust.

And I think it's interesting that that is one thing that the COVID inquiry found. So the government did a long COVID inquiry, which just dropped. And it found that because of a number of policy choices that had been made, from lockdowns to mandates to transparency of communication, there had been sort of quite a significant loss of trust within the community in government and that that would have an impact on the levers that the government was able to pull in a future pandemic.

RUBY:

Maddison, thank you so much for your time.

MADDISON:

Thanks so much for having me.

RUBY:

You can hear more of Maddison’s reporting on this story, with her co-reporter Tynan King, on the ABC’s Background Briefing program.

[Advertisement]

[Theme Music Starts]

RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Legislation aiming to ban Australians under the age of 16 from social media is set to be introduced to parliament today with the crossbench already briefed overnight.

It comes as a wide-ranging parliamentary inquiry, predominantly focused on the impact of social media on young people handed down its recommendations, which did not include backing a social media ban for under 16s.

And, in his first public remarks since the re-election of Donald Trump, Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd says he’s ready to work with the incoming US administration.

Kevin Rudd has previously been highly critical of Trump, calling the president-elect a village idiot.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

[Theme Music Ends]