When a new Yale University study identified a debilitating syndrome linked to Covid vaccines, Lindy Ayers breathed a sigh of relief.
The 31-year-old Army veteran, from Arkansas, has been wheelchair-bound since she took her second Pfizer shot in 2021 as part of the government’s military mandate.
For years she was told her extreme fatigue, sickness and heart palpitations were anxiety. Then doctors said it was long Covid. She was branded an antivaxxer for suggesting it could have been the vaccine.
Thousands of Americans have reported similar stories. After the study news dropped, DailyMail.com spoke to dozens of Americans, including those in healthcare, law, and the military, who said they felt a sense of validation after years of being dismissed as crazy.
Dr Trevor Keyler, a 39-year-old biology professor from Minnesota who describes himself as ‘pro-vaccine’ and ‘pro-science’, has been forced to cut his work hours after suffering extreme tremors and fatigue and partial blindness following his Moderna vaccine.
For years doctors told him his symptoms were not related to the vaccine and were probably Covid itself or long Covid. The doctor, who said he used to be a ‘very healthy’ and outdoorsy person, can no longer hike with his wife and two children.
The mRNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer are estimated to have saved tens of millions of lives globally from Covid, including 3million in the US.
But experts have said the push to quell damaging anti-vax misinformation has left those with genuine post-vaccination injuries treated like outcasts.
Lindy Ayers, 31, is wheelchair bound after doctors diagnosed her with a Covid vaccine injury, she told DailyMail.com
Mrs Ayers had just completed a triathalon (she is seen biking at left) months before passing out and becoming paralyzed. She is seen at right after her injury
In the small study, Yale researchers found patients with previously unknown ‘post-vaccination syndrome’ show distinct biological changes.
The most common symptoms appear to be brain fog, dizziness, tinnitus and exercise intolerance, a feeling of exhaustion after limited exercise.
In patients with the syndrome, the vaccine also appears to awaken a dormant virus known as Epstein–Barr and interfere with people’s immune systems in complicated ways still being studied.
Meanwhile, people with the post-vaccination condition had high levels of coronavirus proteins in their blood, years after taking the shot, which could leave their bodies in a permanent state of inflammation, causing a host of other problems.
The Yale experts emphasized the results ‘are still a work in progress’ (for example, it’s not clear how common the condition is) but they highlighted a need for further studies.
Mrs Ayers believes she has the syndrome. She was at peak physical performance when she received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine in September 2021.
Two months later, she was reliant on a wheelchair.
Doctors dismissed the symptoms as anxiety and prescribed antidepressants, but Mrs Ayers told DailyMail.com her condition soon started ‘rapidly declining.’
Her regular 10-mile runs and 20-mile bike rides quickly dwindled, and she suffered muscle tears, including in her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
During an art class, Mrs Ayers passed out. She said: ‘I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I’ve been in a wheelchair ever since.’
For a year and a half, doctors assumed she had long Covid due to elevated levels of spike proteins.
Dr Trevor Keyler, a biology professor in Minnesota, was an avid mountain biker when he developed cataracts and tremors after his Moderna vaccine. He is pictured at left before the injury and at right after
Kari Ponce de Leon, 43, from Montana, told DailyMail.com she developed low platelets and red spots after her Pfizer shot in 2021. She was later diagnosed with hemolytic anemia and Evans syndrome
Persistent spike proteins in the body are thought to cause some of long Covid’s symptoms – fatigue, brain fog – by keeping the body in a constant state of inflammation.
It wasn’t until 2023, two years after receiving the vaccine, that doctors at the Veteran’s Affairs and Stanford University diagnosed Mrs Ayers with ‘chronic fatigue’ from the vaccine residuals.
Mrs Ayers was also positive for reactivated Epstein-Barr syndrome, much like the patients in the Yale study.
She said: ‘Doctors told me there’s nothing else they can do for me and to just rest. They would say stuff like “You could die in seven months, or you could live the rest of your life like this. We don’t know what’s going to happen to you. We don’t know what’s wrong with you.”‘
Mrs Ayers spent another eight months bedbound and unable to speak, and her husband, who is also a Coast Guard veteran, had to take leave to care for her.
She said: ‘I get these crashes where if I try to take care of myself, my body shuts down and I’m in so much pain. I can’t even lift my arms.’
While Mrs Ayers has seen slight improvements, such as being able to sit up, she worries about being taken seriously.
‘I’m not an anti-vaccine person. I think vaccines help people, but I think this specific vaccine hurt a lot of people.
‘It’d be cool if more people understood that it can hurt people so that more doctors will research and they’ll have a cure for what I’m going through.’
Since the injury, the father-of-two (pictured here with his family) has been forced to cut back his hours as a researcher
Erica Evers, a 42-year-old former legal compliance worker from Iowa, was reluctant to take the Moderna vaccine when her employers mandated it.
However, she told DailyMail.com she would have risked losing her job and her health insurance, which she needed to pay for treatment for her son’s chronic health issues.
She said: ‘I had to choose between his life and my own. It’s not a choice when you’re a mother.’
The day after her first dose, Mrs Evers developed blurry vision in her right eye, and she couldn’t see anything directly in front of her.
‘It was absolutely terrifying. I felt very unsafe,’ she said.
This worsened after her second dose, leading Mrs Evers to seek out an eye doctor specializing in the retina, the tissue at the back of the eye that helps the brain interpret light signals.
The doctor diagnosed Mrs Evers with a retinal hemorrhage, or bleeding at the back of the eye, which is treated with monthly injections in the eye.
Around the same time, she developed tinnitus, a persistent ringing in the ears, which caused hearing loss.
MRI scans showed Mrs Evers had swelling in her brain, which has been shown to cause vision and hearing issues.
However, doctors told her all three issues were likely unrelated and didn’t explain what may have caused them.
She said: ‘I kept asking them if it was the vaccine, and the big hospitals kept saying, “No, absolutely not. The shots are safe and effective.” They couldn’t diagnose what was happening to me. ‘
Erica Evers, 42, suffered blurry vision and bleeding behind the eye after her vaccine. She is seen at left before the injury and at right during a hemorrhage
Mrs Evers told DailyMail.com she worries her vision will become so bad she won’t be able to see her three sons (pictured here)
Mrs Evers now has to get injections in her eye every month to stop the hemorrhaging, which can cost more than $2,000 per dose, and her vision fluctuates throughout the day.
She told this website she worries one day she will wake up and not be able to see her three sons: ‘This has just robbed me of my life with them.’
Her condition has never officially been linked to the vaccine, but she hopes the new research will boost her chances of getting closure.
Kameron Snowden, a 57-year-old service technician from Indiana, received his first Covid vaccine in 2021 to support his wife, a healthcare worker.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘I was never a skeptic. For the sake of my wife’s career, it was something I was willing to do.’
The father-of-one almost immediately felt as if he gained ‘Spidey Senses’ after his second dose.
Mr Snowden said: ‘Lights were brighter. I could hear things across the room that I normally couldn’t hear. Everything was more vivid.’
Soon after, he developed ‘frequencies’ in his ear, which he compares to fax machine sounds.
Doctors dismissed Mr Snowden’s symptoms until 2023, when he suddenly developed an irregular heartbeat that made him feel like he was having a heart attack.
Mrs Evers also has non-cancerous but unexplained lesions on her brain, which she believes are from the vaccine
Mrs Evers, pictured here, said: ‘We’re just left here to rot. We can’t get disability because you can’t get doctors to confirm that you’re disabled by the vaccine. There’s no help available. We’re just left here to die.’
He said: ‘I can’t bend down and stand up without feeling like I’m losing a grip on consciousness. It literally feels like sometimes my brain is being starved of oxygen.
‘I can’t walk up and down stairs without actually grabbing onto the banister because at any time I might get a dizzy spell.
‘I just never know what’s going to happen. I’m scared to be left home alone. You just resign yourself to the fact that your days are numbered.’
In Dr Keyer’s case, the Minnesota professor received his Moderna shot in 2021 and he says it triggered a cascade of health problems.
He battled with extreme fatigue and weakness for a year. In March 2022, Dr Keyler developed blood clots in his right kidney.
In July 2022, doctors diagnosed Dr Keyler with rhabdomyolysis – a breakdown of muscle tissue that causes the release of a protein called myoglobin, which gets filtered through the kidneys.
This can break down kidney cells and damage the organs. In half of rhabdomyolysis cases, people experience kidney complications similar to Dr Keyler’s.
The professor also developed cataracts – a condition that normally affects elderly people but can also develop due to kidney damage. Studies have shown a significant association between the two conditions.
Dr Keyler told this website: ‘I couldn’t stand for more than 20 minutes at a time without being completely exhausted.
‘So I ended up taking a partial leave from work, and then it was just other things kept popping up, like my vision started to deteriorate.’
Mrs Ayers, pictured here, told this website she wishes vaccines were treated like ‘any other medicine’
Dr Keyler said while he plans to get his children most vaccines, he is cautious about giving them Covid shots
In a search for answers, Dr Keyler approached a specialist at Mayo Clinic who could not find an answer to the professor’s ailments.
Experts at the Mayo Clinic believe the multiple conditions Dr Keyler was suffering from were due to post-Covid syndrome, but he believes it was due to his Moderna vaccine.
When asked if there is anything he wish for doctors across the country to know about his experience, he said: ‘In general, they need to believe what their patients are saying and when they don’t know, not come up with something completely wild out in left field.
‘I was misdiagnosed with so many things along the way and some of them were pretty serious.
‘I think they realize it now, but just how debilitating [the experience] can be, and for people to try to even seek help when they’re feeling like that is, I know it was very difficult.’
