OPINION
Shaun Barcavage Testimony: US Senator Ron Johnson Holds Expert Panel On Federal Vaccine Mandates – Nov 2 2021
Transcript from a censored and shadow-banned video of 2021
2:36:26
SHAUN BARCAVAGE: Good afternoon. There are far too many silent sufferers, not because they don’t yearn to reach out but because they’ve tried and found no one cares.
I’m here for all those who could not be here today due to their injury or financial burden. I’m lucky to be even be here today myself because as of yesterday I was finishing treatment with intravenous immunoglobulin and I’m on high dose steroids to try to suppress my immune system.
I’m speaking today as a private citizen and not on behalf of any organization or institution. This is my personal truth. My story.
My name is Shaun Barcavage. I’m a 51 year-old research nurse practitioner. I’m a descendant of hardworking coal miners. I was proudly born in the coal region of Pennsylvania.
Honesty is very important to me. As we are living in a hyper-polarized world, let me start off by clarifying, I’m highly educated. I have 4 degrees. Medicine is my second career. I worked as a [inaudible] for the State Department for 15 years, worked through the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, and the Balkan War. Came back and became a nurse because I love medicine.
Politics has zero impact on me being here today. I’m pro-patient, pro-science, and I’ve been fiercely pro-vaccine my entire life, often having fights with family members to get vaccinated. However like many, I was a bit hesitant about the vaccine. We all had our concerns. I was scared about the new platform, the new spike protein vector, the fact that we were light on more long-term in vitro studies without long term safety data in humans. But as a researcher and a scientist I also understood the need to control and end the pandemic. So I got vaccinated.
As a researcher I fully understand reactions occur and they are real. No medication or vaccine is reaction-free. I get this, and so should everyone else. But in this roll out there were many things that came to light quickly, once I fell into that adverse reaction world.
Prior to December 29th 2020, the day my life fundamentally changed, I was a vibrant, funny, compassionate, healthy person. No medical conditions. No medicines. Never a vaccine reaction.
Let me briefly share my reaction story. I went to the hospital where I work. I stood in line. Almost after, immediately after dose one I developed paresthesias in my right arm. I got injected in my right deltoid. Within hours to days the numbness and tingling traveled to my, the right side of my face, my eye, and my ear. I saw a neurologist, one of the top neurologists in New York City. He said, Oh, if it subsides, get the second shot. We just don’t know. It’s all new.
So it subsided. Against my better judgment, I went back and I got in line. Those two literally sent me into a tailspin. Within 4 days I developed debilitating tinnitus.
What I recall from that is the month of February, curled up in a fetal position on the bathroom floor, wondering, how will I ever live with this? It was so severe, I couldn’t hear TV, couldn’t watch, listen to music or read a book or hear what people were saying. I thought my life was over.
It continued. It got right facial tingling back, numbness, throat tightness, tachycardia, wild fluctuating blood pressures. Severe right-sided headaches and brain fog.
I went back to the neurologist, I told him all that was going on, he said, oh, wait it out, it might likely subside again. I said, I don’t think so. This is pretty bad.
I ended up in the emergency department January 30th. Despite all my years of nursing experience, having been familiar with the vaccine trials, I offered up quickly, I think I’m having a reaction to the vaccine. I was quickly dismissed by a physician who had no knowledge about these vaccine reactions. I was sent home with Ibuprofen. So many missed opportunities to treat me.
Things continued to progress. I developed POTS* syndrome, never even heard of it before I was a nurse, where you can’t stand for more than 5 minutes without your heart rate zooming, getting faint and nauseous.
Severe intractable insomnia. I never had a problem sleeping before. Suddenly I’m taking 5 meds to try to get to sleep.
Muscle twitches, tremors, adrenal dumps. Adrenal dumps that would burn my muscles and my stomach.
I’m a bright individual. I’m like the nurse chihuahua, I nip at heels. And I fight. I pursued everywhere across the country, from New York to California, looking for answers, pestering top researchers, scientists, doctors, getting nowhere. Getting no recognition. Getting dismissed.
By August I had literally exploded in generalized body neuropathies. Imagine, waking up in the middle of the night, stinging in my hands and feet, burning in the soles of my feet, prickling all over like I fell in a bush of nettles.
And you know I had to put, a lot my symptoms were subjective. Physicians don’t deal well with subjective symptoms. You’re tossed into the basket of anxiety. So I pushed for objective sympt—, objective data. I insisted, let’s do a tilt table test. Showed my dysautonomia.** Pushed for a skin biopsy. Showed I’d developed small fiber neuropathy.
Still I couldn’t get anybody to take an interest in me. I’m a researcher, I found that curious. Here I am presenting, unusual case. Study me. I’m the perfect candidate. I give you objective data. If I tell you my pain’s a 7 out 10, it’s a 7 out of 10. I don’t minimize or maximize.
Feeling so alone and so scared, I turned to social media because I couldn’t find anybody like me for support. In mere months, I had thousands of people. I set up a tinnitus group, 3,500 members joining in months. Later I found 6 other groups focused on neurological symptoms. I started to help them as a nurse. It was the best way I could help. Use my resources.
I started researching, reading journals, hearing what they were hearing, reading as much as I can, sharing with them. Helping the people who had no insurance understand what their labs were. People who had no money, guiding them, what tests they should get, how best to use their money.
Crazy thing is, social media, you’re there, you’re looking for support, you find support. They suddenly tag you, misinformation. You’re not real. You’re an anti-vaxxer.
You devolve into more despair. To date, not a single doctor I saw, and I saw many, many, the list is long. I know all their names. I saved all their emails of what they said to me and what they couldn’t say and didn’t say, or didn’t do. Not a single one of them logged me in VAERS.*** Not one. All my reports are my own.
My goal here today is to speak as a researcher. A lot’s been said already. I’ll just emphasize, if we mandate vaccines, it’s clear we need to mandate manufacturers and government institutions to step up and investigate us. It’s not right. It’s immoral.
Reactions are real. They’re a part of science. I got unlucky. But it’s unethical to hide them. Even if it’s for some greater motive.
A real example of our own government being egregious in their behavior to hide it. I direct you to OSHA’s website. It’s right there. They are not enforcing recording requirements of worker side-effects mandated to get the covid 19 vaccine. Go to their website, it’s there, clear as day, they don’t enforce reporting. That’s my own government.
Data sharing. We know NIH did a study. I’d love to know what was in it. It’s unethical to hide research if it’s, if there’s information in there to help people. I know this. I’m a researcher.
We also must return science into the hands of scientists, and get it out of money, donor money, and politics.
We deserve safe and effective vaccines but we also deserve a effective and safe government. I don’t think we have that right now.
[reviewing notes] Skip a little bit here, because it’s all been said before.
We want you to know, I’m a science-driven nurse practitioner. And I remain pro-vaccine. I dedicated my life to medicine and helping people. Heartbreakingly, I ended up in the realm of the injured. But the real tragedy is not only the lack of adequate medical support, but the the active and coordinated denial of our situations. Even by my own colleagues.
Finally, I want you to know that I was never the activist type. I never pictured myself being here. But fear and despair have changed me. This experience has shattered my life. Like all of you, I know where you are. The 24-7 tinnitus has robbed me of every moment of silence and peace. The impact on my medical career, which I love and worked so hard for, is immeasurable.
I will continue to fight. I will continue to research. I will find an answer for people, or I will die trying. Thank you for your time.
12:13
[END]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
* “Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) is a condition that causes a number of symptoms when you transition from lying down to standing up, such as a fast heart rate, dizziness and fatigue.” Source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/16560-postural-orthostatic-tachycardia-syndrome-pots
** “Dysautonomia refers to a group of medical conditions caused by problems with the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This part of your nervous system controls involuntary body functions like your heartbeat, breathing and digestion. When the ANS doesn’t work as it should, it can cause heart and blood pressure problems, trouble breathing and loss of bladder control.” Source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/6004-dysautonomia
*** VAERS is the official US government Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
https://vaers.hhs.gov/about.html (Note: https://openvaers.com/covid-data provides VAERS data in a more reader-friendly presentation)
- List of Transcriptions by Transcriber B (home page)