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US Army finally approves back pay for 24-year-old veteran injured by mandatory COVID shot – LifeSite

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(LifeSiteNews) – A previously healthy young soldier who developed devastating heart issues from mandatory COVID-19 vaccination will finally receive back pay and medical benefits two years after the military’s initial denial that her injury was “in the line of duty” and led to her accumulating $70,000 in medical debt.

On June 24, investigative journalist Catherine Herridge published a report on the ordeal of U.S. Army Specialist Karoline Stancik, who, in her early 20s with excellent health and no history of heart issues, found her life completely upended after being required to take Moderna’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, which transformed her from being able to run 10 miles at a time to requiring 27 pills a day and “having trouble just standing up.”

“I am 24 years old, I have had three heart attacks, a mini stroke, and I am now getting a pacemaker,” she told Herridge, adding that she had never tested positive for COVID itself. She had no doubt that the COVID shots were the only variable that could have caused the change.

Herridge said her own team reviewed military records confirming Stancik suffers from postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which has been linked to both the COVID virus and the mRNA vaccines pushed as the solution to it. Given her lack of positive tests with the former, Stancik considers the Army memo recognizing that link “100 percent” an acknowledgement her suffering was caused by the latter – an admission she had to fight military bureaucrats for 19 months to obtain.

She was released from active duty in April 2022, which cost her both her monthly income and health insurance, as her superiors refused to acknowledge her vaccine injury as “in the line of duty,” to shirk their legal obligations to retain her. As a result, she accumulated more than $70,000 in medical debt, was homeless for a three-week period, and at one point even considered suicide.

“Her case is representative of hundreds, possibly thousands of other vaccine injury cases, but moreover it’s indicative of the systemic problem of the Department of Defense abandoning injured servicemembers, and vaccine injuries are also very political, and the leadership in the Defense Department did not want to address that, and still does not want to address that maybe we hurt our own people,” Jeremy Sorenson, a former Air National Guard pilot now with the Uniformed Services Justice & Advocacy Group (USJAG), a nonprofit representing the interests of injured service members, told Herridge.

In an October 2023 memo, Army Human Resources Command finally acknowledged her POTS was contracted in the line of duty, restoring her claim to medical benefits once she left the military.

An Army spokesperson told Herridge that “Covid vaccine-injured” was a non-specific term that couldn’t be medically diagnosed and that an unspecified “publicly available statement” from Stancik indicated she was aware she could have remained on active duty for medical care but acknowledged “documentation” that she “was counseled on this option has not been located.” She continues to maintain she was “never counseled or informed” of alternatives to her April 2022 discharge.

On July 25, a month after her original report, Herridge announced that Stancik had been granted “full relief” by a military review board, which will return her to active duty with back pay and allowances, albeit expediting that pay to cover her existing medical debt could take “several months.”

“Serving as the CEO of (USJAG) for three years and seeing the worst of humanity behind the scenes has made it all worth it,” said Nic Gray, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq and is now CEO USJAG, which represented Stancik. “This is not just a massive win for (Karoline) but for the tens of thousands of others abandoned by the (U.S. Department of Defense). We’re just getting started!”

A large body of evidence identifies significant risks to the COVID vaccines, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under former President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative. Among it, the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 37,734 deaths, 217,112 hospitalizations, 21,793 heart attacks, and 28,490 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of June 28, among other ailments. U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published February in the journal Vaccine “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID vaccines, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, and offered several theories for a causal link.

Until December 2022, the Biden administration enforced COVID-19 vaccine mandates on American servicemen and women, provoking lawsuits and threatening soldier and pilot shortages in the tens of thousands, further exacerbating broader problems of force strength, troop morale, and public confidence. When the mandate was finally lifted, it did not come with reinstatement or back pay for soldiers who had been ousted for refusing to comply.

Stancik, meanwhile, continues to provide regular updates on her fight and her medical situation via her X (Twitter) account and a GiveSendGo page where donations can be made toward her medical care.

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