V-Safe Voices: Tachycardia Post-COVID Vaccination

DailyClout Introduces a New Series: “V-Safe Voices”

NOTE: Please view in the Substack app or on Substack.com for the full table-viewing experiencing. Only a small section of the table displays in email.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses V-safe to monitor vaccine safety. After signing up, V-safe participants share, through an app, with the CDC how they or their dependent(s) feel after getting a participating vaccine, including the COVID-19 vaccines. The app presents many pre-defined symptoms from which participants may select what are viewed as "normal," post-vaccination complaints -- e.g., fever, soreness at injection site, fatigue. In addition, vaccine recipients may enter additional details in a "free-form text" field. This field allows them to type in symptoms and details not covered by the pre-defined options.

In 2023, Informed Consent Action Network’s (ICAN) attorneys sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to force the release of the vital V-safe free-text entries. In January 2024, in a huge win for transparency around COVID-19 vaccine injuries, a Texas judge ruled in ICAN’s favor. With this ruling, the court ordered the CDC to produce the 7.8 million free-text field entries from the V-safe reporting app at a rate of 390,000 entries per month. The entries offer the opportunity to read first-person vaccine injury accounts. Notably, the CDC fought in court to not make this information public.

This first "V-Safe Voices" entry focuses on tachycardia, an elevated heart rate of more than 100 beats per minute. In the initial release of 390,000 entries, I found 1,585 containing "tachy" or tachycardia. In reading through those entries, several things became clear.

• As expected, people in the medical field got COVID vaccines early, signed up for V-safe, and began recording their experiences. Abbreviations and words used throughout this data, such as "SOB" for "shortness of breath," indicate users' familiarity with medical terminology.

• Many vaccine recipients mentioned adverse event-related visits to the "ER" (emergency room), "ED" (emergency department), urgent care, and primary care doctors, as well hospitalizations, some of which lasted several days.

  • During such medical visits, patients often received Benadryl, Pepcid, epinephrine, and/or steroids. One patient noted she had to use her EPIPEN.

• Among some V-safe participants, there seemed to be a desire to both note their adverse events while at the same time floating the idea that they may be related to other things -- e.g., anxiety, strong coffee, job- or family-related stress, etc. Many stated their unsureness if the COVID vaccine caused their symptoms.

• Several made entries asking if they should or should not get their second shot given their reaction to the first one. I cannot help but wonder if such inquiries received a timely response from the CDC or not.

• Tachycardia often presented along with other symptoms, most of which sounded like anaphylactic reactions.

• The data released does not contain the brand or brands of COVID vaccines recipients received.

Below are the tachycardia entries found in data available for download from ICAN's website. (Flip through the table’s pages using the arrow at the top, right-hand corner of the page.) While some patients' symptoms began almost immediately, others experienced adverse events hours or even days later. Additionally, adverse events sometimes resolved quickly while, in other cases, continued for many days. Each of these entries represent the suffering of a real, often frightened person; and we will make sure these voices that the CDC wanted to hide from the public are heard.

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