Report
Cries for Help: Injury and Death Buried in V-Safe Data
React19 searched the free-text responses that CDC released from its V-safe COVID-19 vaccine monitoring system for pleas for help, suicidal statements, reports of dying or near death, and reports of a death. The book states that 3,329 participants submitted 14,430 matching entries out of 7,554,929 responses from 3,489,888 participants. A 1,047-page PDF prints a short introduction and method note, 75 sample entries, 30 notable cases, and every matched participant's entries in four sections, grouped by CDC registrant code and dated. It states that entries are self-reported, that it does not assess causation or what CDC did with the reports, and that its counts are a floor. The totals reconcile with the printed text and with the ICAN files; the selection rule does not reproduce from the printed keyword list.
Who made it
- React19 is described in Brownstone's author note as a non-profit that offers financial, physical and emotional support to people with long-term adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination (Brownstone article, author box). The book states that React19 'exists so that people injured after vaccination are heard, believed, and cared for' (printed p. 7).
- Brownstone Institute calls React19 'an organization we support' and says it typeset React19's document into the book (Brownstone newsletter post, 6 Oct 2026). Brownstone describes itself as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Austin, TX (article footer).
- The PDF title page reads 'React19 / Brownstone Institute'; the copyright page (printed p. 4) states first edition 2026, set in EB Garamond, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. The PDF metadata gives a creation date of 30 Sep 2026. The Brownstone article page was previously recorded as CC BY 4.0.
- The book states that it was 'compiled from CDC V-safe free-text survey responses produced under FOIA request 24-01322 and published by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN)' (printed p. 4; repeated printed p. 6). The front matter does not name the court case, the plaintiff or the date of the request.
- Brownstone's president, Jeffrey A. Tucker, read entries aloud on X and wrote that he planned to finish the reading by 2 Nov 2026 (Tucker, 'Why People Avoid Grappling With Deep Suffering', reproduced at freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4399002).
- The records were produced in Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice v. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, No. 2:23-cv-00102-Z (N.D. Tex., Amarillo). The plaintiff's lawyers of record are John Clay Sullivan (S|L Law), Aaron Siri and Elizabeth Brehm (Siri & Glimstad LLP) and Christopher Wiest.
- The book is offered as a free download and for sale as paperback, Kindle and audio on Amazon (Brownstone article). Amazon lists Part I as a Kindle edition (ASIN B0HM8B86XG) and a Brownstone paperback (ASIN B0HM57V61Y); a candidate-file note records Part II as 440 pages, published 7 Oct 2026.
Its claims checked against the record
12 claims checked:8 supported · 4 partly supported · 0 contradicted · 0 not in the record
A verdict rests on the documents named in its row.
| The work says | Verdict | What the record shows |
|---|---|---|
| 3,329 participants submitted 14,430 entries that ask for help, report suicidal thoughts, say the writer was dying or nearly died, or report a death; about 1 in 1,048 participants. | Supported by the record | The printed text holds 3,329 distinct participants and 14,430 dated entries, split across the four sections as the table states once the 30 Part Two cases are counted in. The ratio follows from the book's two totals. Whether each entry belongs in its category depends on the unprinted selection rule (next claim). |
| The section table: Cries for Help 1,468 participants / 8,193 entries; Suicidal Statements / Death Wish 344 / 1,622; Dying / Almost Died 448 / 1,872; Death Reports 1,069 / 2,743. | Supported by the record | Every stated figure is reproduced exactly. The section headings repeat the table. Part Two's assignment of its 30 cases to sections is not printed and is inferred from what the entries report. The Defender's 8,193 / 1,468 and Rapley's 344 are these section figures. |
| The source is 7,554,929 responses from 3,489,888 unique participants in twelve CDC tranches covering 14 December 2020 to 31 December 2022. | Supported by the record | The ICAN files hold 7,554,929 data rows and 3,489,888 distinct registrant codes; the total includes the 16,418-row 12th Under-3 file and 17,557 rows whose three text fields are empty. CDC and the court give larger figures (about 7.8 million; more than 7.6 million), and the cumulative 7,800,000 in the order's schedule was not delivered; the book does not mention the difference. |
| The records were 'produced under FOIA request 24-01322' (copyright page; Introduction). | Partly supported | The ICAN page titles all twelve 'Updated' files '... 24-01322-FOIA' and the 'Original' files carry no request number, so the book takes the number from ICAN's updated-file names. The court's opinion says the plaintiff, Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice, submitted the request on 3 January 2023 and gives no request number; CDC's number in the earlier retrieval of the plaintiff's appeal letter was 23-00462-FOIA. No document read ties 24-01322 to the plaintiff's request: it is a tracking number used on the production files, with a 2024 prefix, and the book names neither the plaintiff nor the case. |
| CDC released the free text in twelve tranches, which ICAN published, and ICAN's updated files add survey type, response ID and response date. | Supported by the record | The page lists the 1st to 12th releases in two versions. The updated files have the columns SURVEY_STATIC_ID, REGISTRANT_CODE, RESPONSE_ID and STARTED_ON beside the three text fields. |
| Because check-ins follow vaccine doses, entries were treated as post-vaccination reports unless the writer named another cause; entries attributing illness to COVID-19 infection or the writer calls unrelated were excluded. | Partly supported | The schedule ties check-ins to doses. Myers 2026 states that V-safe 'does not record reasons for health impacts or medical care' and 'did not ask participants to only report those impacts or medical care related to vaccination', so a check-in's timing does not link an entry to the vaccine. Some kept entries name a non-vaccine cause: the Death Reports section includes entries giving a death certificate with cancer and COPD (printed p. 1019), COPD with fungal pneumonia (p. 985), congestive heart failure (p. 859) and coronary heart disease (p. 1046). The rule is applied by the compiler and not shown. |
| 'V-safe was built to hear from people after vaccination, and these participants used it for that purpose.' | Partly supported | The protocol states the purpose of v-safe surveillance is 'to rapidly characterize the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines... and to detect and evaluate clinically important adverse events and safety issues that might impact policy or regulatory decisions'. The survey carries an optional free-text field for 'any other symptoms or health conditions you want to report'; the court records a 250-character limit, with two fields at 4,000 characters until June 2021. The protocol's limits section states v-safe 'is not conducive to capturing the adverse event of death following vaccination' (PDF p. 12), and its list of special-interest events notes 'Capture of deaths through v-safe will be limited' (PDF p. 55). |
| Participants reported that promised call-backs never came and asked whether anyone was reading their reports; the system 'asked them to report and, as they describe it, did not respond.' | Supported by the record | The entries contain both kinds of statement (a pattern search finds callback or no-contact wording in at least 198 participants' entries and 'is anyone reading' wording in at least 78; pattern counts, not a reviewed count). CDC's documents describe call-center follow-up for medically attended events only, state that individual review of free text was precluded, and say free-text analysis 'results were nonspecific'. The current FAQ says CDC will not call a participant directly and that V-safe does not alert a doctor; the question and answer are not reconciled with the protocol's call center. |
| Thirty notable cases show 'how their reports unfolded over time'. | Supported by the record | The 30 blocks are the participants' entries in date order with no commentary. Fifteen report a death, nine report symptoms with requests for help, five report suicidal thoughts and one reports a cardiac arrest. All content is the writer's statement; internal date and interval conflicts appear in four cases and one case includes statements about a vaccine lot and household deaths that no document in the book supports. |
| CDC withheld the free-text fields in its 12 January 2023 final response, a federal court ordered production of about 7.8 million entries on 5 January 2024, and the check-the-box data had been released earlier. | Supported by the record | The opinion records that CDC issued a final determination to withhold all free-text entries because many contain unsolicited personally identifiable information and CDC lacked the resources to review them manually (p. 7). It records that the check-the-box data was released in ICAN v. CDC, No. 1:22-CV-481-RP (W.D. Tex.), ECF 19, 8 Sept 2022 (p. 4). The order requires production of all free-text responses with registrant numbers on a monthly schedule from 390,000 by 15 Feb 2024 to a cumulative 7,800,000 by 15 Jan 2025 (pp. 28-29). It found production not unreasonably burdensome, citing about 7% of responses expected to contain PII (pp. 18, 21-22). |
| CDC analyzed V-safe free text only in part. | Supported by the record | Wong et al. (CDC COVID-19 Response Team) filtered 6,168,832 free-text responses for menstrual and bleeding terms and found 63,815 people, and state the study 'is unable to assess whether these events are caused by COVID-19 vaccination'. Myers 2023 describes natural-language-processing and MedDRA coding as planned. CDC's 2025 slide states that NLP results were nonspecific and that a new contract was required to MedDRA-code the responses. The court recorded about 5 million converted entries released by Dec 2023. The Myers 2026 summary through June 2023 does not mention free text, deaths or MedDRA in the PMC text. |
| The book's headline and subtitle describe 'Injury and Death Buried in V-Safe Data'. | Partly supported | The files were produced by CDC only after the 2024 order, and the book prints what participants wrote. The title states injury and death; the book also states that it does not assess whether any event was caused by the vaccine, that entries are self-reported, and that it cannot say what CDC did with them. CDC's own protocol warns that V-safe is not suited to capture death, and CDC's papers do not analyze these entries. No document read verifies any injury or death in the book. |
What the record shows that it leaves out
- The book's front matter and introduction (printed pp. 4-9) say nothing about the court case, the plaintiff (Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice), the 3 January 2023 request, CDC's 12 January 2023 refusal, or the 5 January 2024 order (ECF 40; ICAN v. CDC, No. 1:22-CV-481-RP, ECF 19, for the earlier check-the-box release).
- CDC was converting the free text to MedDRA codes and had released about 5 million converted entries by December 2023 (ECF 40 p. 5); the book does not mention the converted files. ICAN lists MedDRA code files dated 1 Jun 2023, 13 Oct 2023 and 1 Nov 2024.
- The 7,554,929 responses include 17,557 rows with all three text fields empty and the 16,418-row 12th Under-3 file; the order's schedule totals 7,800,000 and CDC's 2025 slide says 'more than 7.6 million'. The book gives no count of responses that contain text.
- The free-text field was optional and limited to 250 characters, with two fields at 4,000 characters until June 2021 (ECF 40 p. 5), and about 5% of surveys contain free text (Myers 2023). The book gives no response rate for free text among the 9,609,282 people who completed a survey (Myers 2026).
- The protocol lists death as an adverse event of special interest and states 'Capture of deaths through v-safe will be limited' (V-safe protocol v3, PDF pp. 55 and 12). V-safe collected no field for the name, date or certificate of a death.
- V-safe's call center completed over 21,000 VAERS reports from participants who reported medical care by 13 December 2021 (Myers 2023). The book does not say how many of its 3,329 participants have a VAERS report from this route; it states the call-back that some entries say never came is a promise the protocol does not make for a free-text entry.
- CDC's HRSA presentation says V-safe relied on donated services from Oracle Corporation and that first-generation operations ended in June 2023 (slide 13).
- The book prints 14,430 entries for participants who wrote 15,020 rows in the files; it does not say which 590 rows are omitted beyond 'one-word answers and entries under those exclusions'.
- The printed keyword list matches 12,598 participants in the files before exclusions (3,203 in the book); the book prints neither the exclusion rule as applied nor the number of matches it removed, and it does not say how the 126 participants who match none of the printed words were chosen.
- No death in the book is verified by a document. Four lines mention a death certificate (two relay a vaccine cause, two a non-vaccine cause) and the Death Reports section includes entries that give non-vaccine causes (printed pp. 859, 985, 1019, 1046).
- The court did not decide that V-safe was designed to hide adverse events; ECF 40 recites that as the plaintiff's allegation (p. 5) and rules on FOIA burden, expedited processing and fees.
Documented efforts and withheld records
Each item is a documented act, with its source: an act against the work, its author or its sources, or the withholding of records on its subject. The list states what was done and does not state why.
- June 2021 (reply and appeal dates not stated in the source). CDC answered a June 2021 ICAN request for V-safe data (ICAN's number IR0519) with a statement that a search of its records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to the request; ICAN appealed, and a follow-up request (IR0547) drew the same answer. Aaron Siri, 'V-Safe Part 5: The Fight to Get the Data' (Siri's Substack; plaintiff's counsel's account, quoting CDC's reply)
- 8 Sept 2022 (order); 30 Sept 2022 (release letter). CDC released the V-safe check-the-box data to ICAN under an agreed scheduling order entered in ICAN v. CDC, No. 1:22-CV-481-RP (W.D. Tex.), after two lawsuits; CDC's 30 Sept 2022 letter supplied download links for that data only, and the free-text fields stayed outside the release. Memorandum Order and Opinion, Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice v. CDC, ECF 40, p. 4; Siri & Glimstad press release (PR Newswire, 3 Oct 2022); Aaron Siri, V-Safe Part 5
- 4 Jan 2023. CDC denied the Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice's request of 3 Jan 2023 for expedited processing (letter of 4 Jan 2023, stating the requester had not shown it was primarily engaged in disseminating information), denied a fee waiver, and invoked 'unusual circumstances' to extend its time to respond. The court later held the expedited-processing denial wrongful and ordered a full fee waiver. ECF 40 (N.D. Tex., 5 Jan 2024), pp. 7, 25-28, citing the CDC letters in ECF 30
- 12 Jan 2023. CDC issued a final determination withholding all V-safe free-text response entries, on the stated grounds that many contain unsolicited personally identifiable information (names, birthdates, social security numbers) and that CDC lacked the resources to review the data manually and segregate non-exempt portions. ECF 40, p. 7 (citing ECF 30 at 33-34); DOJ Office of Information Policy case summary; Dangerous Intersection, 2 Oct 2026 (secondary, gives the date and 'about 7.8 million entries')
- 12 Apr 2023 and 3 Jul 2023. CDC did not resolve the plaintiff's administrative appeals within the statutory time limits. On 3 July 2023 it notified the plaintiff that it would stop processing the final-determination appeal because suit had been filed, and gave untimely notice that it had closed the fee-waiver appeal as moot; the court records that CDC's 12 Apr 2023 email on the fee-waiver appeal was undeliverable and CDC did not try again for nearly three months. ECF 40, p. 7 (citing ECF 30 at 55-56, 153, 157)
- 2023 (briefing); decided 5 Jan 2024. In litigation CDC moved for summary judgment and argued that review of about 7.8 million free-text responses was unreasonably burdensome. Its FOIA officer's declaration estimated 59 years for one analyst, and CDC stated its FOIA office has thirteen analysts. It also argued that its MedDRA-coded data would inform the public better than the free text. The court denied CDC's cross-motion and ruled that blanket exemption claims covering a mass of records are impermissible. ECF 40, pp. 15-18, 28; DOJ Office of Information Policy case summary (last updated 1 Feb 2024)
- 5 Jan 2024. Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk (N.D. Tex.) granted the plaintiff summary judgment and ordered CDC to produce all free-text responses with registrant numbers, first-in first-out, on a minimum monthly schedule from 390,000 by 15 Feb 2024 to a cumulative 7,800,000 by 15 Jan 2025. The order allows CDC to bank excess processing, directs good-faith cooperation and joint filings on disputes, and requires joint status reports on 1 April, July, October and January. ECF 40, pp. 28-29 (read from the plaintiff's copy)
- Feb 2024 to Jan 2025 (production period). CDC redacted personal identifiers inside the released free-text responses; the redactions appear in the data as '(b)(6)' (the FOIA personal-privacy exemption marker), which the book states on printed p. 8 and which recurs throughout the printed entries (868 lines of the book's text contain the marker). The book also replaced names, phone numbers and emails that CDC left unredacted with [name], [phone] and [email]. Cries for Help, printed p. 8 ('A Note on Sources and Method'); ECF 40 p. 7 and pp. 18-22 (order requires redaction of personal identifying information)
- 3 Apr 2024 (article); updated files Aug 2024 to Jan 2025. The first two productions (780,000 entries, about 523,000 people) carried no submission dates. The plaintiff's lawyer said the group was asking CDC for the dates, and a CDC spokesperson declined to answer many questions from the reporter, including those about entry dates. ICAN's later 'updated' files carry a response date. The Epoch Times, 'CDC Releases Hidden COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Reports', 3 Apr 2024 (updated 5 Apr 2024); icandecide.org/v-safe-data
- 3 Apr 2024. A CDC spokesperson told The Epoch Times that V-safe participants who reported medical care after vaccination were called and encouraged to file a VAERS report, that CDC 'attempted to obtain additional information' for serious events, and that VAERS data is analyzed for unusual patterns. The Epoch Times, 3 Apr 2024
- 30 Jan 2025. CDC, through Dr. Hause's HRSA slide deck, told the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines that V-safe free text was 'challenging to analyze', that NLP results were 'nonspecific', and that coding it to MedDRA required a new contract. This is CDC's own account of why the free text was not analyzed and is not a statement about the book. CDC/HRSA, 'V-safe: CDC's newest vaccine safety monitoring system', slide 13 (read through a Wayback copy in the audit)
Published responses
- CDC: No CDC statement on the book was found in the Brownstone, Gateway Pundit, Defender, Expose and NewsTarget coverage or on cdc.gov. Brownstone's post says 'we hear that the CDC is now panicked about this book and reading'; the post gives no source.
- React19 (book introduction): States that entries are self-reported, that the audit does not assess whether the vaccine caused any event, that it 'cannot determine what the CDC did with these reports', and that counts are a floor.
- Dr. Bruce Rapley (Substack, 16 Oct 2026): A reading of the book's suicidal-statement section, citing the book by page; adds no check of the counts.
- The Defender (Children's Health Defense): Reports 8,193 'cries for help' from 1,468 people and 344 participants with suicidal statements, and its own review of at least 300 entries that mention suicide.
- Independent review: No review of the book was found in a web search on 10 Nov 2026. vaccinedatascience.substack.com published an earlier post on what happened to the V-safe free-text entries, quoting CDC's 2023 paper; it does not address this book.
Where it connects
- The Filtered Record: The 4 and 12 Jan 2023 CDC denials, the 5 Jan 2024 order and monthly schedule, and CDC's '(b)(6)' redactions govern how long the free-text record stayed out of public view.
- The Studies Not Run: CDC's published free-text work is the menstrual-bleeding filter (Wong 2022); CDC says the rest was 'challenging to analyze' and needed a new MedDRA contract, so the book prints entries no CDC study examined.
- What Was Known and When: V-safe's protocol states that capture of deaths 'will be limited' and CDC's FAQ says it will not call participants, against entries in which writers say promised call-backs never came.