Paramedics say they transferred few COVID-19 patients during the early stages of the pandemic — despite media claims that hospitals were overwhelmed — but since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines they've seen a rise in heart attacks, strokes, and chronic infections. "If I hadn't heard about COVID all day, every day in the news, I don't think I would have known that anything was any different," said Greg McTague, a paramedic of 25 years from Penticton, B.C. "It seems clear to me at this point, the vaccines are causing a lot more harm than the actual virus." In response to an anonymous testimonial by an Atlanta, Georgia paramedic, who claimed to be seeing a huge increase in cardiac-related calls for vaccinated men aged 18-30, the Western Standard put out a call on Twitter to see if paramedics were experiencing something similar. The Western Standard heard from more than a dozen healthcare workers, including six paramedics, three emergency dispatchers, two nurses, two firefighters, and an embalmer. All said they'd begun seeing an increase in medical conditions, such as heart attacks, strokes, chronic infections, and women with menstrual issues, after the vaccines were rolled out. But they said a culture of silence in the healthcare industry, particularly among doctors, was preventing the issues from being openly discussed. Many healthcare workers said they feared they would lose their jobs for speaking out. The Western Standard chose to showcase the stories of three paramedics, one of whom chose not to share her identity.'The vaccines are causing a lot more harm than the actual virus'McTague said he wasn't busy during the pandemic's early stages. He claimed many people were so afraid of contracting COVID-19 they chose not to go the hospital, even if they were experiencing serious medical episodes. "We weren't being called for COVID-19. It was our usual medical calls and car accidents and stuff like that. But I don't know anybody who actually had COVID that was serious enough to warrant a 911 call or a hospital visit." McTague also said every patient that was brought into the hospital was labeled as having COVID-19, no matter what their symptoms were. "I think they might have even said explicitly 'everybody's COVID until proven otherwise,'" he said, adding that the media and politicians exaggerated the severity of COVID-19. McTague said following the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, he began seeing "weird stuff that I had never seen before." These included a woman in her 30s who suddenly went permanently blind, men under the age of 25 having heart attacks, and people having seizures for the first time later in life, which McTague said "usually happens when people are younger." ."I saw a few people that went blind, but her in particular, she was pretty young and healthy. People don't just suddenly go blind unless they get hit in the head or have a stroke. To just go blind, shortly after being vaccinated, I can't imagine what else that would be," McTague said. Many of the people McTague saw with heart attacks and strokes, "didn't have the textbook presentations or symptoms.". "There was a guy in his 20s, who was a very fit, bodybuilder type. He woke up in the middle of the night screaming with chest pains. We couldn't even assess him because he couldn't talk to us. He was in so much pain and writhing around. I can't prove to you what caused that, but he had been vaccinated," McTague said.. McTague said because the majority of paramedics got vaccinated and "obviously felt an air of superiority," they are more likely to "turn a blind eye" to injuries that could have been caused by vaccines. "They just say, 'it can't be the vaccine, because that's been proven safe and effective. So it's got to be something else,'" McTague said. "Then people like me, we see these calls differently. We look at a patient with those presentations, and we think, 'we can't prove it, but maybe it was the vaccine,' and we are at least open-minded. Whereas the other people wouldn't even consider it as a possibility. Because they also don't want to admit they might have made a mistake.". McTague ended up losing his job in October of 2021 for not getting vaccinated. He said besides wishing he had gotten a full pension, he doesn't regret his decision. "I don't miss that job at all. And the way things are now, I don't think I could ever go back anyways," he said. McTague said he believes the COVID-19 vaccines have caused more damage than the virus itself. "I'm not saying that there is no COVID virus, I just don't think it's any more serious than the average seasonal flu. And what the politicians have done is beyond stupid." 'I've seen a lot of these cases in the last few weeks.' Elliot Axelman, a paramedic of eight years from New Hampshire, and author of Corona-Fascism, also claimed to not have been busy during the initial months of the pandemic. He said it appeared many were too afraid of getting COVID-19 to come to hospitals. Asked if he saw an increase in COVID-19 patients, Axelman said he "never noticed anything different among anyone, to be honest." "I remember this one guy, we were bringing him back to a nursing home, and he had beaten COVID. He was 85 years-old, with obesity, heart disease, diabetes, CHF, COPD, and other issues, and he'd had COVID and got over it. I thought, 'he's the ideal guy this disease is supposed to kill,'" Axelman said. Axelman claimed hospitals in the U.S. over counting COVID-19 patients "by potentially tenfold." He claimed the PCR tests were done at 45 cycles instead of the recommended 25, resulting in a higher number of false positives and they used an overly broad list of symptoms for COVID-19 that ended up including people with other illnesses. Additionally, Axelman said for every COVID-19 positive patient a hospital admitted, they received around $13,000 from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS). When a hospital would put a patient on a ventilator, the hospital would also received approximately $39,000 from the CMS. While the fact-checking site Snopes acknowledged that hospitals receive money for patients admitted for COVID-19 and placed on ventilators, they said "the $13,000 and $39,000 figures appear to be based on generic industry estimates for admitting and treating patients with similar conditions." Axelman said he's heard of an increase in cardiac-related calls in young men since the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out. One case that stuck out to Axelman was a 17-year-old boy that came with chest pain and dizziness two days after his second shot. Axelman said the boy had elevated Troponin levels, which is a protein released into the blood after a heart attack. "I was talking to the attending doctor in the ER. And she was freaked out," Axleman said. "She was like, 'I've seen a lot of these cases in the last few weeks.' And I asked, 'so young males with myocarditis after the second shot?' And she's like, 'Yeah.'" Axelman said while most cells in the human body can regenerate, brain and heart cells cannot. "When they die, they're dead forever. And that's the issue with heart failure. It's always progressive. It never really gets better." Since the vaccine rollout, Axelman said he has also seen a huge increase in females with "weird" issues with their menstrual cycles. He's heard of women experiencing heavy or irregular periods, and even cases where women who have already gone through menopause got their periods again. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development noted COVID-19 vaccines were occasionally associated with a "small, temporary menstrual change in women.” But Axelman said even minor menstrual cycle changes can have far-reaching implications for women's fertility. "You don't need to be a genius to know that the same system that affects the period, is the one that impacts fertility and pregnancy," he said.'They're all so, so sick. It's just this general decline in the population' A paramedic of 18 years from Southern Ontario, who refused to divulge her full name because of fears she could lose her job, said the call volume for paramedics was reduced during the first months of the pandemic. "Everybody was so scared, they were all staying home. But we were not seeing people sick with COVID-19," she said. The paramedic said they were busier during that winter, but the call volume was still lower than previous years. "The only thing that was different than a normal flu season was that patients' oxygen saturation would be lower. But we never saw any young people. These were all 80 year-old, bedridden people [who] were dying," she said. The paramedic said during the third wave of COVID-19, they kept hearing on the news that "Toronto hospitals were overwhelmed and they were using ambulances to transport people to surrounding hospitals." But after they signed up for a hospital transfer shift, they would "sit there for 12 hours." "I did one transfer out of a Brampton hospital, but that was it. They eventually cancelled the program because nobody needed to be transferred out of the hospital," they said. "But then I would go home and hear on the news that hospitals were overwhelmed, and yet I had just been to the ICU that day, and seen that the place was half empty. And I thought 'what is going on here? Where are all the COVID patients?'" The paramedic also claimed that screening for COVID-19 was extremely broad, and any patient with "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, shivers, or shortness of breath" was labelled as COVID positive. "And that's considered to be everybody. So if you had a breathing problem because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, you were considered COVID positive. I don't know if that's how it worked for the hospital numbers, but that's how we would treat it when we were dispatched," they said. The paramedic said during the Omicron wave of last winter, when "everybody I knew got sick with COVID," virtually nobody was sick enough to be transferred to hospitals. "I would say I saw three people that maybe died in 2021, but they were all over 75 years-old and had all the comorbidities. Three people for a whole year. I work full-time in a busy service where I'm doing eight calls a shifts," she said. But the paramedic said since the vaccine was rolled out, they have seen a large increase in young people experiencing chest pain right after getting vaccinated. They have also seen an uptick in middle-aged people suffering from strokes, and an "enormous amount of people in their 50s and 60s with new-onset heart arrhythmias." "I have to do a very thorough history. They'll tell me these problems started a month ago, and then a couple questions later they'll say they got their fourth vaccine dose around that same time. I can't tell you how many healthy, older people have gotten their third and four doses, and now they've got these new cardiac issues. It just seems really obvious to me. I don't see unvaccinated people getting this sick." The paramedic also claimed to be seeing older people with chronic infections that "just keep getting worse and worse." "They tell me 'I just keep getting worse. I don't know what's going on. I can't get up anymore. I'm weak, I'm nauseated all the time, and I've got his chronic infection I can't seem to recover from.'" "I've been working for 18 years, and the majority of my patients now are in their last few weeks of life," the paramedic said. "They're just dying. They're all so, so sick. It's just this general decline in the population."
