COVID Vaccine Injuries Deserve a Day in Court

Published

1 year ago

February 13, 2024

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Some 270 million Americansreceived at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. Tens of thousands have since claimed they suffered a COVID vaccine injury,ranging fromminor side effects to severe adverse reactions. Around 9,000 of those people have requested compensation through the only legal avenue available to themthe federal government’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

To date, the CICP has paid only $30,855to just eight claimants. Another 1,588 people have had their claims turned downmaking for a 98 percent rejection rate. Thousands more have been left waiting with no response. If their claims are also rejected by the program, they have no other means of ever getting compensation.

Typically, someone who’s been injuredby a product, medical or otherwise, would be within his rights to sue the manufacturer in a state court. Since the 1980s, federal liability protections prevent people from suing vaccine makers.

But under the decades-old National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), people claiming an injury from a non-COVID vaccine are given an alternative to standard civil litigation. Injured patients instead sue the federal government in special vaccine courts, where both sides have lawyers, a special master (judge) decides claims, and people can appeal rejected compensation requests to higher courts. VICP petitioners need only show a preponderance of the evidence that they were injured by a vaccinea relatively low burden of proof. The VICP approves about half of all claims and pays out $200 milliona year (all funded by an excise tax levied on vaccine doses).

The CICP is nothing like this. The program has its origins in a piece of war on terror legislation intended to create liability protections for makers of novel, emergency countermeasures to bioweapon attacks and the like.

It’s an administrative process, meaning patients’ claims are decided by a federal bureaucrat, not a neutral judge. Claimants have no right to a lawyer and no right to appeal to a higher court. They must also show by “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence” that their injury was caused by a COVID vaccine.

That’s an exceedingly high burden of proof for vaccines that were approved without the typical years of study and testing, saysKatharine Van Tassel, a law professor at Case Western Reserve School of Law. “We did not have very much time to study [COVID] vaccines, so we know the risk of injury was higher,” Van Tassel explains.

All these features help explain the CICP’s high rejection rates.

Advocates for the COVID vaccine injured are asking, through lawsuits and bills in Congress, to move them out of a dysfunctional CICP program and into the standard VICP program, where they stand a chance of actually getting compensation for their injuries.

UK

Fireball at Southend Airport after small plane crashes

Published

3 hours ago

July 13, 2025

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Fireball at Southend Airport after small plane crashes

A small plane has crashed at Southend Airport in Essex.

Essex Police said it was at the scene of a “serious incident”.

Images posted online showed huge flames and a large cloud of black smoke, with one witness saying they saw a “fireball”.

A police statement said: “We were alerted shortly before 4pm to reports of a collision involving one 12-metre plane.

“We are working with all emergency services at the scene now and that work will be ongoing for several hours.

“We would please ask the public to avoid this area where possible while this work continues.”

It has been reported that the plane involved in the incident is a Beech B200 Super King Air.

According to flight-tracking service Flightradar, it took off at 3.48pm and was bound for Lelystad, a city in the Netherlands.

One man, who was at Southend Airport with his family around the time of the incident, said the aircraft “crashed headfirst into the ground”.

John Johnson said: “About three or four seconds after taking off, it started to bank heavily to its left, and then within a few seconds of that happening, it more or less inverted and crashed.

“There was a big fireball. Obviously, everybody was in shock in terms of witnessing it. All the kids saw it and the families saw it.”

Mr Johnson added that he phoned 999 to report the crash.

Southend Airport said the incident involved “a general aviation aircraft”.

Four flights scheduled to take off from Southend this afternoon were cancelled, according to its website.

Flightradar data shows two planes that had been due to land at Southend were diverted to nearby airports London Gatwick and London Stansted.

Essex County Fire and Rescue Service said four crews, along with off-road vehicles, have attended the scene.

Four ambulances and four hazardous area response team vehicles are also at the airport, as well as an air ambulance, the East of England Ambulance Service said.

Its statement described the incident as “still developing”.

David Burton-Sampson, the MP for Southend West and Leigh, posted on social media: “I am aware of an incident at Southend Airport. Please keep away and allow the emergency services to do their work.

“My thoughts are with everyone involved.”

Local councillor Matt Dent said on X: “At present all I know is that a small plane has crashed at the airport. My thoughts are with all those involved, and with the emergency services currently responding to the incident.”

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World

Meredith Kercher’s killer faces new trial over sexual assault allegations

Published

3 hours ago

July 13, 2025

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Meredith Kercher's killer faces new trial over sexual assault allegations

The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.

Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.

He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.

Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.

Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.

Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.

The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.

Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.

The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.