New Recordings Point to Smear by Los Angeles Times Columnist Michael Hiltzik

Documented by the New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, and many others, Hiltzik’s long history of unethical behavior continues.

9 minute read

“I know your sentiments on this and, I understand it, where you're coming from,” pleaded Dr. Danice Hertz, a California physician who retired around the time she was injured by a COVID-19 vaccine. “Patients, sick people have the right to healthcare, have the right to know what has happened to them. The research should be done. And this effort to keep it quiet is not good.”

Dr. Hertz’s entreaty for fairness came during an interview last March with Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, who was cobbling together a hit piece to attack a Yale study Dr. Hertz participated in documenting COVID-19 vaccine injury. Dr. Hertz explained to Yale Alumni Magazine this month that her symptoms appeared within half an hour after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

Her blood pressure spiked, she was dizzy, her vision blurred. Her skin felt like it was burning. Brain fog, chest pain, hives, and other symptoms soon followed. Hertz was diagnosed with a form of nerve damage, as well as other conditions whose symptoms continue today, several years later.

Dr. Hertz told me in an interview that Hiltzik had an obvious agenda to tarnish her credibility and dismiss her medical expertise by labelling her an anti-vaxxer for daring to participate in Yale’s study. Concerned about Hiltzik’s lack of professionalism, she recorded her interview with the Los Angeles Times columnist and provided it to me.

When Hiltzik published his column undermining the Yale study, he snuck the “anti-vaccine” label into the LA Times by asserting that “critics have labeled” as “anti-vaccine” an organization Dr. Hertz advises called REACT19. Former preschool teacher Brianne Dressen founded REACT 19 after she volunteered to participate in a COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial and was also harmed.

Dressen then participated in a study by the National Institutes of Health for patients injured by COVID-19 vaccines.

“Now, a small number of other researchers worldwide is beginning to study whether the biology of Long Covid, itself still poorly understood, overlaps with the mysterious mechanisms driving certain postvaccine side effects,” Science Magazine reported on the NIH study of Dressen and others with COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

Dressen has also provided me a recording of her interview with Hiltzik.

“It was pretty obvious that he was writing a hit piece on us and I wanted to document what he said,” Dressen told me.

Here’s what Hiltzik asserts in his column:

Although critics have labeled REACT19 as an anti-vaccine organization, both say that’s untrue — it aims to support research into PVS.

Hiltzik does not identify these alleged “critics” of REACT19 to Los Angeles Times readers; he neither cites, quotes, nor hyperlinks to any source. However, it seems quite clear from Dr. Hertz’s and Dressen’s recorded interviews with Hiltzik that the “critics” Hiltzik writes about are actually Hiltzik himself.

“We are an organization with 36,000 people, in the United States alone, 100% are vaccinated,” Dressen tells Hilzik in the interview. “And the majority of these people volunteered themselves to be vaccinated. In reality, this is nothing more than a medical condition. There should absolutely be nothing political about this and it's been extremely abhorrent and hurtful for all people that are harmed.”

After publishing his column on the Yale study, Hiltzik then wrote a post on Bluesky: “The scientific study feeding a right-wing attack on vaccines.”

Hiltzik’s shabby history of unethical behavior

Several media outlets have documented Hiltzik’s long, tortured history of unethical journalism at the Los Angeles Times.

After newspapers began switching to email in the early 1990s to make it easier to contact sources and speed up fact checking, the Los Angeles Times uncovered some glitches with the new technology. In 1993, the paper’s editors discovered someone in Moscow was spying on their newspaper reporters. After laying a trap, they caught the culprit: their own employee Michael Hiltzik.

“In a stunning example of growing concern over technology and privacy in the workplace, The Los Angeles Times has recalled a foreign correspondent from its Moscow bureau for snooping into the electronic mail of his colleagues,” The New York Times reported in 1993. A senior editor at the LA paper told the New York Times that they caught Hiltzik after setting up a “sting operation” to catch whoever was prying into their reporters’ private emails.

Thirteen years after he was exposed for spying on his own Moscow colleagues—who the hell does this?!—Hiltzik graced the pages of the New York Times a second time in a 2006 report that the Los Angeles Times shut down a blog Hiltzik was running for violating the paper’s ethics guidelines. In this incident, Hiltzik started fake internet accounts to both attack critics and pose as online cheerleader for his own inflammatory opinions.

"We're still investigating the matter and will not comment further until we've completed that process," an LA Times spokesperson told the New York Times.

"[Y]ou really expect your staff to maintain their integrity,” an editor for a North Carolina paper said at the time.

A Columbia Journalism Review editor characterized Hiltzik’s actions as “sort of like stuffing the ballot box … I think it’s silly and stupid … the online equivalent of writing a letter to the editor under a false name praising your own work.”

LA Observed’s Kevin Roderick reported that the LA Times sent out a staff memo—“yeah, dumped on a Friday afternoon” he reported—stating that editors were reassigning Hiltzik for violating the paper's ethics guidelines.

“[E]mploying pseudonyms constitutes deception and violates a central tenet of our ethics guidelines: We do not misrepresent ourselves and we do not conceal our affiliation with The Times,” reads the memo sent by Editor Dean Baquet. “The most important attributes we bring to that new world are our reputation, our integrity and our determination to put out a great newspaper that behaves in accordance with the highest ethical standards.”

Famed media gossip Nikki Finke later wrote in Deadline that “after his suspension without pay, [Hiltzik] will be reassigned to ‘sports investigations.’”

Hiltzik’s long history of ethical misfires alarmed both Dr. Hertz and Dressen.

“I understood the game he was playing,” Dressen told me. “For him it’s a game but for us it’s real life—it’s survival. It’s not just the element of humiliation he was aiming for, because it impacts our ability to be believed and get medical care.”

By asserting that “critics have labeled REACT19 as an anti-vaccine organization” without providing any evidence to support this phantom claim, Hiltzik once again violates LA Times ethics guidelines.

Here’s the Los Angeles Times’ own ethics guidelines on making empty assertions:

It is unacceptable to hedge an unverified or unverifiable assertion with words such as “arguably” or “perhaps.” Our job is to tell readers what is true, not what might be.

I’m releasing the recordings and transcripts of Hiltzik’s interviews with both Dr. Hertz and Dressen below.

“Just keep an open mind,” Dr. Hertz tells Hiltzik. “We are real. We have been suffering, and there are many of us, and we need help.”

---

LA Times Michael Hiltzik interview with Dr. Danice Hertz

HERTZ: Let me just ask you again, I'm going to record it. Let me just ask. So is it okay for me to record this?

HILTZIK: Yes, it is. Do you mind if I quote you by name, or would you prefer to be?

HERTZ: Um, you can use my name. I'm very transparent about what's happened to me.

HILTZIK: Um, where do you practice?

HERTZ: Actually, I'm retired. I retired in October of 2020. I practiced for 33 years, gastroenterology in Santa Monica, at St. John's hospital. And for the last six or so years, I was affiliated with Cedars Sinai.

HILTZIK: Oh, oh, oh, great, well. Terrific.

HERTZ: I had a wonderful career.

HILTZIK: And how old are you, if you don't mind my -

HERTZ: I am 68.

HILTZIK: Okay, that's almost an early retirement. [laugh]

HERTZ: Yeah, you know, it was a mat—COVID hit. And as you know, everything shut down. Our office shut down, our surgery center where we did our colonoscopies shut down. I had also broken my arm three months before COVID hit. And I was unable to use my arm yet, So I wasn't able to do procedures.

And we all went home and we were basically trying to take care of patients via the telephone and Zoom. And it was, everything was very slow. There wasn't much going on. And I decided then to take a leave of absence for three months just because they really didn't need all of us in our practice to cover what we were doing, at home.

And I decided I liked it. I really didn't know that I would like retirement, but that leave of absence was very nice, and so I decided to retire. I was thinking about it before COVID hit, but it just kind of pushed me to decide to do it.

HILTZIK: Okay, well, as you know, I did talk to Brianne Dressen. And what I'm doing is, I write at the business column here at the LA Times, but I write a lot about health care….

HERTZ: Mm-hmm.

HILTZIK: …scientific research. And so I'm trying to put together a piece that looks at this the Yale study that was published as a pre-print, I guess a week or two ago, and has led to a lot of discussion among researchers and positions about what it says, what it means, and whether, given the sort of politics of healthcare at the moment, it was wise to even publish it as a pre-print at all.

And you can give me some some thoughts of that if you want. But first, I'm interested to know what was your contribution to the paper since you ….

HERTZ: Bri and I were not involved with the scientific research at all. Our contribution really was proofreading the manuscript, making suggestions to make the manuscript clearer to the reader. And honestly, I didn't even know that I was gonna be an author. It was kind of a surprise. So we didn't really do all that much.

We were listed low down on the list, meaning we had the least input into this study.

HILTZIK: And you were not a member of the testing sample of the, I mean you didn't.

HERTZ: I was a member of the LISTEN study, and they did collect my blood several years ago, but I don't know what blood they used, if they used mine or not. So I can't really answer that.

HILTZIK: Oh, okay.

HERTZ: It's blinded and they didn't, they didn't give us any results personally.

HILTZIK: Okay, and the identities of the sample of both the test and the control are anonymized anyway so we don't know who….

HERTZ: Correct.

HILTZIK: Um, now, so, so you had experience with a post vaccine, um, uh, injury or conditions. Do I, do I understand that right?

HERTZ: Correct.

HILTZIK: And what was your experience?

HERTZ: I received one dose of the Pfizer vaccine on the second week of the rollout. I was a very early receiver of the vaccine. I walked into the facility, healthy, feeling fine. And within 30 minutes, I started having symptoms—and I won't bore you with the details—but within 24 hours, I became severely ill. There were many symptoms.

I had severe burning in my face, as well as the rest of my body. I had tremors, twitching. I felt like I was vibrating inside. I felt like I was being electrocuted. I had tinnitus, dizziness, imbalance, brain fog, trouble speaking, trouble thinking, trouble making out words, trouble walking. I felt like I was going to die. It was really terrifying.

I went to bed and basically was a complete invalid for at least a year, if not two. And I'm happy to say over time I've improved. I've sought medical care from many physicians and institutions including Stanford, Harvard, the NIH—I was part of their study.

It was very hard to get medical care. Nobody knew anything about these reactions. And I really couldn't get medical care. But in the process of all of this, I desperately started seeking answers and writing to everyone that I came across, on the TV, or reading about who was studying the vaccines, and I also came across many other people who had very similar injuries to mine. And we formed a small group that became a larger group, that became many groups. And it became very clear that there are very many people who have suffered similar injuries to mine.

HILTZIK: So when you got the Pfizer shot, that was not part of a clinical trial. It was basically it was being rolled out for the public.

HERTZ: Yes, I got it the second week of the rollout. That was December 23rd of 2020. I was ecstatic to get the vaccine. I literally ran as fast as I could when I found out that I was able to get it, and I was not part of a clinical trial. It was voluntary.

HILTZIK: Okay. And, uh, is that the only COVID shot you've gotten?

HERTZ: Correct. [laughs]

HILTZIK: I mean, you didn't get back in.

HERTZ: No, I was pretty sure I would not survive a second one.

HILTZIK: Okay. And what about other vaccines? I mean, you otherwise

HERTZ: I'm completely vaccinated. I have always been pro-vaccine. I've always recommended vaccines to my patients. I'm a very traditional physician and practiced in a traditional way. My family is completely vaccinated. I have always been a fan of vaccines. And as I said, I was very ecstatic to be able to get the COVID vaccine at that time.

HILTZIK: Okay, and would you advise patients or friends or family to get the COVID vaccine?

HERTZ: I would advise that patients be given informed consent and that they completely understand the risks. They should understand the potential adverse reactions including death, as many people have died from this vaccine, and then it will be their choice whether to get it or not.

I was not given informed consent. I was told it was safe. I signed a piece of paper. No one told me anything about risks. And I believe that is wrong.

HILTZIK: And what, do you have a sense as to how common the reaction that you got might be to the COVID vaccine, whether it's Pfizer or Moderna?

HERTZ: I believe it is widespread. We as a group know of tens of thousands of people who have experienced similar reactions, but I think it's much bigger than that. I think there are many people who have been injured and don't know that the vaccine was the cause of their illness.

Unfortunately, the medical community is uninformed about these side effects and they don't know about them. So when they see a patient walking in with all these new symptoms, they're baffled. And unfortunately, there are no tests really that make this diagnosis. Many of us have been tested up and down and really nothing has been found.

So I think it's widespread. I can't give you numbers. My hunch is it's in the millions, but at least in the hundreds of thousands.

HILTZIK: And do you have a sense that there are conditions that people might have that they don't know about that might make them predisposed to the sort of reaction that you experienced?

HERTZ: We don't know that answer. I think it's very important that we try to find out who might be predisposed so they can be counseled properly on whether or not they should receive these types of vaccines. And that research needs to be done.

HILTZIK: And have your doctors or anyone else you know of said or suggested that you had some sort of pre-existing condition that might have made you predisposed to this?

HERTZ: No.

HILTZIK: Okay, and had you had COVID yourself?

HERTZ: No. I was fortunate that I had retired just a couple of months earlier. And basically I sheltered in my home. I was terrified of getting COVID. I have a husband with Parkinson's and I was very worried about his well-being. And we didn't leave our house.

We didn't let anyone in, we ordered groceries, we wiped them down with alcohol wipes. I was very neurotic about it. We both did get COVID finally, in late 2023 for the first time. But that was way past my vaccination. And I had been tested multiple times for COVID during my workup for the vaccine injury, and my nucleocapsid antibodies have been negative repeatedly up until the time I got COVID in late ‘23.

HILTZIK: And do you do you have any sort of residual effects from having gotten COVID?

HERTZ: You know, my condition pre-COVID, my vaccine syndrome, post -vaccine syndrome, flared up for two or three months. Everything amplified. And then it calmed down to where it was before, and I've been at that level since then. And I have not had COVID again.

HILTZIK: And the level now is are you still feeling effects? Or...

HERTZ: I am. I am. They're nowhere near as severe as they were the first year or two, but I feel them every day. My face burns. My skin burns. I feel numbness. I feel these vibrations in my legs. I have ringing in my ears. I have chest pain. I have pericarditis. Yes, but I can function, I just got back from the market. But I couldn't go out or do anything for a very long time. So I feel much better, but I'd like to feel better than I do.

HILTZIK: Okay, now, you may be aware, Brianne, certainly is, that React 19 has been labeled by vaccine advocates as an anti-vax organization, but I would gather you probably don't agree with that.

HERTZ: I don't agree with it. I'm on the advisory board. I'm on the research committee of React 19. It is far from the truth. It's completely inaccurate. Every single person involved with React 19 has been vaccinated. So to call us anti-vaxx is ridiculous. We've all been injured so we do have opinions about this particular vaccine that has hurt us, and none of us are running to get another dose of it. But we are all pro-vaccine and pro-science.

HILTZIK: And what about the argument that there's so much sort of general vaccine opposition or skepticism, or whatever you want to call it, that the findings of the LISTEN study, which I think the paper itself says, “We need to be careful about extrapolating what we've seen here to the general population.”

That this will be misused by the anti-vaccination movement, and that therefore maybe the authors should have waited until they could have a peer review before publishing.

HERTZ: Well, my feeling is that researchers should be allowed to ask questions and seek answers. There should be scientific freedom for them to do so. Their quest for scientific answers should not be censored or controlled, which it seems to be.

And I feel that these researchers came across findings that were alarming and what you might call bombshell findings. And they felt it was important enough to release them, albeit at a very early stage. And they come right out and say this is a work in progress, this is very preliminary, we definitely need more research, we need larger studies.

They had no funding for this study. They pulled it out of their coat pockets to do this very limited study. So that's why the numbers are small. But I feel that it was their right to release this information. I hope it spurs more research in this area and that we can have larger studies to answer these questions.

HILTZIK: Okay, Denise, I think that covers most of what I wanted to chat with you about. And I really appreciate your taking the time. Is there anything I haven't asked or anything you want to leave me with?

HERTZ: Um, you know, just off the record, I know your sentiments on this and, I understand it where you're coming from. But a lot of this has really been covered up and there are many, many suffering people out there. There are many people who have died, whose families are grieving. And we have not been heard. We have been ignored. We've been literally kicked into the gutter. And it's just wrong.

I mean, patients, sick people, have the right to healthcare, have the right to know what has happened to them. The research should be done. And this effort to keep it quiet is not good. So I just want you to know that. I know there are many people like you and who have those opinions, but I don't really think you understand the situation. And everyone should keep an open mind.

And there is no harm in asking questions and seeking the answers. You know what? If the answers say, “Nothing's wrong with us.” Okay, let's just get the answers. Anyway, that's off the cuff, off the record.

HILTZIK: Oh sure. Do you have any impression that the doctors, that your doctors have figured out more about your syndrome than they might have when you first presented?

HERTZ: Absolutely.

HILTZIK:[00:19:04] They do? They do?

HERTZ: Absolutely. I mean, I've seen approximately 30 doctors. Being a physician, and I was pretty well known in Los Angeles, I was able to pick up the phone and call the head of this department, the head of that department, and get them on the phone. And they knew nothing.

Honestly, some doctors looked at me cross -eyed like, “Girl, you've gone nuts.” [laughs] And I've literally been told by very prominent doctors “The only thing I can recommend to you is, here's the name of a psychiatrist.” Honestly, honestly. And many of us have experienced that. I mean, can you imagine being so sick and [laughs] that's what you get from the medical system?

HILTZIK: Yeah

HERTZ: And it's pretty awful.

HILTZIK: It would be.

HERTZ: It's, I mean, it really shook my whole belief system. Here I spent my whole life helping people and taking care of—doing the best job I could to take care of my patients. And it was it was pretty dramatic. With time, the doctors who care for me now, who are very well thought of doctors at USC, at St. John's in Santa Monica … they totally get it. They know. They have other patients with the same thing.

They have stood up for me and argued with their colleagues that this is real. Because, of course, their colleagues don't know anything about it. And they share the progress that we're making, the happiness that we feel when someone is there to help us and try to figure out what's happened to us. From our end, this has been a wonderful thing. It's the first group of legitimate researchers. And as you know, they're very legitimate …

HILTZIK: Oh yeah.

HERTZ: … who are listening, who are hearing us, who believe us. And who want to help us. And they're gonna put up with all this resistance that you and other people are creating. They don't care. They want to help, and that's their motivation.

HILTZIK: Well, I'm not actually... I mean, having talked to you and Brianne, I see your … I think your view’s on board. So yeah, I think, you know, the column probably won't be what you expect.

HERTZ: I hope so. Just keep an open mind. We are real. We have been suffering and there are many of us and we need help.

HILTZIK: Yeah, I hear it.

HERTZ: That's the bottom line.

HILTZIK: Okay, well, I hope I can contribute.

HERTZ: Thank you. I hope so, too. Thank you for listening to me. I'm sorry I ranted on at the end, but I feel very strongly. This has been my life for four years.

HILTZIK: Okay, great. Well, don't let me keep you, but thanks again for taking the time.

HERTZ: My pleasure, thank you so much. Nice to meet you, Michael. Take care.

LA Times Michael Hiltzik interview with Brianne Dressen

HILTZIK: Hello, is that Brianne?

DRESSEN: This is Brianne. Who is this?

HILTZIK: It's Mike Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times.

DRESSEN: Oh, hi, Mike. How are you?

HILTZIK: I'm good, thank you. Yourself?

DRESSEN: Not the greatest, but it's just the new normal, I guess. So thanks for asking.

HILTZIK: Yeah, I gather you've been having health issues for a while.

DRESSEN: Yeah. Yep. It's not, it's not the greatest. That's for sure. But hopefully we'll be able to get some answers at some point.

HILTZIK: Thanks for taking the time to chat.

DRESSEN: Yeah, of course.

HILTZIK: So, I think as I mentioned, I'm interested in this preprint that was published by the researchers at Yale that has gotten a lot of attention, both positive and negative, as I'm sure you've seen.

DRESSEN: Yeah, yeah.

HILTZIK: And so my first question is, what was your role? How did you participate in the research?

DRESSEN: My participation was really minimal, as you can see, you know, like in, um, are you a science writer? Or like, usually how these studies go is the people with the least amount of involvement are at the lowest point in the paper. And then the lead researcher name is like at the very, very end of that line.

HILTZIK: Right. I talked to Dr. Krumholz.

DRESSEN: Okay, great. Yeah, he's great. Um, so my involvement was essentially proofreader. And I went back and would ask them questions on the paper on things that people in the general public wouldn't understand what that meant. And that was about it. Oh, and I added a couple of references of different papers that I knew that were out there here and there. And yeah.

HILTZIK: And were you a subject of the study that they ran?

DRESSEN: No, I abstained from participating.

HILTZIK: And what's your view of the value of publishing the paper?

DRESSEN: You know, obviously, my response is gonna be different than academia, right? Or even someone in industry, because I come from a background of clinical trial participant. I participated in the study at the NIH where they flew a couple dozen of us out for our vaccine injuries, and they diagnosed us with post-vaccine … I have a record of post-vaccine neuropathy on my. records from the NIH themselves. And that went to pre -print.

So for me it's been mostly just understanding what is left unsaid and what hasn't been looked for. And for the people that are ill, like I am, that are dealing with 20 plus some symptoms that started hitting their bodies for the first time within 24 hours of a vaccine, it's really important for us to find the answers to what's going on. Whether those are “It's from the vaccine” or “It's not from the vaccine.” Right?

Like if it's not from the vaccine, great. If people can prove that, that's fine. I would just like to know what else it could be. You know what I mean? So I do genuinely believe that this type of research is important. First and foremost to quell the uproar of voices that are, you know, that continue to be ignored that are raising some of these questions. And the best way to answer a question is to look into it and provide an educated answer.

Ignoring people doesn't do anything, it just makes them more upset.

HILTZIK: Um, and so was it your, was it your feeling that, um, after these vaccines got rolled out that, um, um, reports of, uh, post -vaccine syndromes were ignored or were unduly dismissed.

DRESSEN: Well, I think maybe the best place to dig into that would be the Science Magazine article that we were in. You probably are unaware of that. I can try to find it and send you a link to it. We kind of went through that with several other researchers. And there's enough of a—there's something going on that's giving enough researchers pause to make them want to look into it. But the issue is, you know, research funding. And then, industry is not really eager to even begin to ask the questions on what could be going on.

And so that's where this is. I think it's an important first step to, “Is it vaccine injury or is it not?” Let's look into it. Let's see if we can get some really good quality researchers to put some information together to show what really is going on.

HILTZIK: And can you talk a little bit about what symptoms you suffer from or what your injury is?

DRESSEN: Yeah, so I have post-vaccine neuropathy diagnosed from the NIH like I mentioned before. I've had several other neurologists verify that and have added diagnoses of small fiber neuropathy, most likely an autoimmune rooted—so it's rooted in autoimmune. And brain fog, severe food sensitivities, hair loss, dizziness.

The neuropathy is what makes it so my hands aren't working. It's kind of, it's really concerning because it feels like I'm rolling around in cactus all the time, which is what small fiber neuropathy is capable of doing.

HILTZIK: You mean like pins and needles?

DRESSEN: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So it feels like it's like pins and … You know, like when, um, you're you fall asleep on your leg and that heavy numb, but it's that prickly feeling? It's like that, but through my body all the time and it started within an hour of my injection, which is where .., Multiple doctors since then have been like, “Well we can't find any other reason for this to happen to a healthy woman of childbearing age and so you know it's definitely looking like it is post-vaccine neuropathy.”

HILTZIK: And how old are you if you don't mind.

DRESSEN: I was 39 when this happened.

HILTZIK: And it happened in 2021, or?

DRESSEN: It was November 4th, 2020. So I went in on November 3rd election day and voted for Joe Biden. And then I went in on November 4th and went and got my shot. And I was proud to do that, by the way. I was a proud participant to help us all get out of the pandemic. And before I signed up for the clinical trial, I made masks for the hospitals. I rounded up N95 masks for the hospitals out of people's garages when there was the mask shortage.

So, you know,I was in it to help society, right? And to help get us all out of the pandemic faster. And the science between the—with the phase 1, phase 2 clinical trials, it was really fascinating. The trials were very successful. So by the time it got to phase 3, it was, it just looked like they just needed more numbers to finish out the trial. So I signed up.

HILTZIK: So you got your shot as part of a new clinical trial.

DRESSEN: Yep. I got it as part of a clinical trial here in the U.S. I got it before anyone else could. So I got it before, like, “I got it first!”

HILTZIK: Which shot was it?

DRESSEN: I got AstraZeneca. And after my injury was reported to the NIH, which started that vaccine adverse event study, they pulled it off the market—AstraZeneca off the market. There were two of us that were injured in the trial that reported our injuries to the NIH because there was funny business going on with AstraZeneca.

The NIH flew us out and they themselves diagnosed us with post -vaccine complications. I don't think it should be taboo at all to be researching this. Is there like an actual reason that people should be afraid of what this type of research will unearth? Do you think?

HILTZIK: No, I don't. I don't think there's any question that most scientists seem to be in favor of doing the research. Now, had you had COVID by then, or have you ever had it, that you know of?

DRESSEN: I had not had it, and that's why I qualified for the clinical trial. That is because I had never had COVID. And then after my injury, when I was hospitalized, they kept testing me for COVID because they were like, “This is really weird if it's not COVID.” And every single time I got tested for it, it came back negative. It was 12 or 13 times that they tested.

They even did a spinal tap looking for it and they couldn't find it. So those all came back negative. I didn't get COVID until April of 2022. And it was terrible. So.

HILTZIK: Oh no, you bad case.

DRESSEN: Yeah, and long COVID is a real thing, and people dealing with the complications from long COVID, they absolutely have questions too, just like we do, and they need answers too. We're all just desperately just hoping that someone will come along and decide that we're worth it.

HILTZIK: And do you do you think that that you might be suffering from long COVID as well?

DRESSEN: I definitely am a hybrid. I state that multiple times, yeah. So after my vaccine injury, things were really, really rough. But the NIH put me on IVIG. Do you know what that is?

HILTZIK: What is it again? What did you say?

DRESSEN: IVIG, it's immune globulin. It's basically people's healthy immune cells—1 ,000 to 10 ,000 people's immune cells in a bag, and they infuse it into your veins. So that helped a lot, which once again, leads it to being potentially immunological in nature. Because they're infusing you with healthy immune cells and then the neuropathy and all the pain goes down.

When I got COVID, that all like erupted like a, like a bomb, right? And I've had COVID twice now and both times it did it.

HILTZIK: And it's IV, IV for Victor, IG for...

DRESSEN: And I believe that Science magazine article may talk about that in a little bit of detail too and what the NIH was doing with it.

HILTZIK: Okay, I can probably find the Science Magazine article. When did it?

DRESSEN: Um 2022, maybe 2023. There were two of them and one has my name all over in it and then the other one … I believe actually Harlan spoke in that one in the second article that they did. They that they were trying to coin the term “Long vax.” And so they were talking about that. And you've got a small fiber neuropathy expert in there, Anne Louise Oaklander. And she's quoted as saying, when there's smoke, there's fire.

HILTZIK: And do you recall who the author was in the piece for pieces?

DRESSEN: Yeah, this was Jennifer Frankel Couzin, I believe is her name.

HILTZIK: Finkel, F -I -N -K -E.

DRESSEN: F -R -A -N -K -E -L and then

HILTZIK: I'm sorry. I'm

DRESSEN: Jennifer Frankel, hang on, wait, I can look it up. I'll tell you in a second. Oh yeah, okay, Couzin, C -O -U -Z -I -N. F -R -A -N -K -E -L, Jennifer Couzin-Frankel.

HILTZIK: If I can't access it, I'll let you know. Okay, now, your organization, React 19. you know, has been described, I think, by... some pro-vaccine people as an anti -vaccine organization. What would you, is that unfair or untrue?

DRESSEN: Absolutely. I definitely disagree with that statement. We are an organization with 36,000 people, in the United States alone, 100% are vaccinated. And the majority of these people volunteered themselves to be vaccinated. It's been an incredibly difficult road to not fit in any singular box, as in “anti-vax” or “pro-vax.” In reality, this is nothing more than a medical condition. There should absolutely be nothing political about this and it's been extremely abhorrent and hurtful for all people that are harmed.

That's just as straightforward as I can say it. I hope that makes sense.

HILTZIK: Yeah, sure. And have you been vaccinated for other things?

DRESSEN: Yes, fully vaccinated. My husband was vaccinated after this happened to me. He also was actually in a pro-vaccine campaign, here locally, after this happened to me in the Salt Lake County, here in Utah. So, I don't see this as like a... I know that that's what reporters love to do.

I understand that it's so much easier to just put people in a box and then just sit them there and then people can just keep yelling over us. But really, for people that are sick, it just feels everyone's yelling over the top of us instead of actually looking at us and going, “Oh, what's wrong?”

We get it from all sides, by the way. Just so you're aware, Michael, we get … Since that Yale paper has come out, we have gotten hate from everywhere: because we're not pro -vax enough, we're not anti -vax enough. We're—it's been brutal.

HILTZIK: I'm sorry to hear that. Now I'd like to try to reach out to Danice Hertz.

DRESSEN: Yeah.

HILTZIK: Do you know how I can reach her? I can’t reach her.

DRESSEN: Yeah, I talked to her last night. She's really nervous about talking. So her health is like mine where, people coming after her, it hits you physically.

HILTZIK: Sure.

DRESSEN: And so I can reach out to her and tell her that you're very nice and respectful.

HILTZIK: I hope you will.

DRESSEN: And see if she'll talk with you.

HILTZIK: Okay, and if she wants to remain confidential, I can do that too.

DRESSEN: Yeah, she's super sweet. She's an injured physician. I don't know if you've looked her up at all.

HILTZIK: Yeah, no, I am aware of that.

DRESSEN: Yeah, she's pretty simple. Pretty straightforward, lady.

HILTZIK: Kkay great, well terrific. Well thanks very much again. Is there anything i haven't asked for that you want to leave me with?

DRESSEN: I don't think so. Oh, you asked about something about the sample size or whatever. Is that a question that you're asking about?

HILTZIK: Yeah, go ahead.

DRESSEN: So my thoughts on the sample size, and this is just my opinion, I can't represent these guys, right? I'm just speaking in my own capacity. There's an increasing … the number of people that have not been exposed to COVID keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So I was actually surprised that they found that many people in that incredibly small sample size that they did. And I would love if there was a study bank somewhere, some researcher that would bank that blood before those people got exposed to COVID. I think that would be really interesting for research moving forward.

But we've got to get politics out of this so we can. Just let the researchers ask the questions and come up with the answers.

HILTZIK: Okay, all right, Brianne, thanks very much and I hope you get to find the light at the end of the tunnel here and get better.

DRESSEN: Yeah, well, thanks. I appreciate that.

HILTZIK: Okay, all right. Well, good luck and thanks again

DRESSEN: Okay, bye.