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Four-month-old Josette Petrone received six vaccines at a routine wellness visit. Two days later, she went down for her afternoon nap and never woke up again.
“Josie,” as her family called her, was in perfect health when she went in for her 4-month check-up at 3 p.m. on Aug. 19, her father Ryan Petrone told The Defender.
Josie was developmentally advanced, Ryan said. She was holding her head up like a 6-month-old and was able to roll in both directions. “Her pediatrician was super happy with everything,” he said.
The office staff gave Josie the six vaccines the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends babies receive at age 4 months, including a first dose of the RSV monoclonal antibody shot and a second dose of the DTaP, Hib, pneumococcal, rotavirus and polio vaccines.
Josie received an oral liquid containing the rotavirus and polio vaccines, and two combined shots of the other vaccines.
She became irritable, which was “completely out of the norm” for her as she was a “super happy, super easy baby,” Ryan said.
For the next two days, Josie continued to be irritable and refused to nurse.
On Aug. 21, “Our perfect, beautifully healthy baby girl — full of joy, full of love — went down for her afternoon nap and never woke back up,” said Josie’s mother, Mollie Petrone, in an interview on CHD.TV.
Ryan and Mollie live in Lewes, Delaware, with their three other daughters, ages 3, 5 and 14.
Ryan told The Defender that Josie went down for her nap at 4 p.m. on Aug. 21. At roughly 5:20 p.m., the family’s nanny noticed the baby was blue and not breathing. She rushed Josie to where Ryan, Mollie and their other kids were.
Ryan, a professional paramedic, immediately began doing CPR on Josie. “When I started CPR, I knew she was already gone,” he said. “She was too hypoxic for too long … her pupils were fixed and dilated. But I had to do something. I had to try.”
Ryan managed to restore a pulse. Josie was flown to Nemours Children’s Hospital in northern Delaware, where she lived three more days on life support until she was declared dead.
The death certificate listed the cause of death as “pending.” State officials ordered an autopsy and are still awaiting results.
Josie’s pediatrician filed a report with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal vaccine injury tracking program co-run by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
‘Everything says I love Josie’
Ryan and Mollie’s other girls have been deeply affected by Josie’s death. Their 3-year-old, who was 2 when she watched her dad perform CPR on Josie, performs CPR on her baby doll, singing, “Wake up, Baby Josie.”
“Our 14-year-old is compartmentalizing,” Ryan said. The family members are in counseling, but it’s still hard.
Their 5-year-old in kindergarten writes both her name, Lacey, and Josie’s name on her assignments. At home, Lacey takes a marker and writes Josie’s name on everything, Mollie said.
“Everything says I love Josie,” Mollie said. “It’s just been devastating for all of us.”
CHD.TV Director Polly Tommey said Josie won’t be forgotten. “We’re going to write Josie’s name on our bus, which has 12,000 signatures” memorializing people who died following vaccinations. “And we will keep her on our website.”
Baby’s mother: ‘Don’t follow blindly’
Before Josie died, her parents trusted medical professionals and the CDC when they said vaccines are safe, Mollie said.
Now, they hope to raise awareness of the risks of giving so many vaccines to babies at once. “Don’t follow blindly,” Mollie told CHD.TV.
They said they wish they had pushed back against the CDC schedule by spacing out or delaying the vaccinations — if they chose to vaccinate Josie at all, Mollie said.
Ryan said he found it “unreal” that none of the medical providers he spoke with knew anything about the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which made it illegal for families to sue vaccine makers if they believed their child was harmed by a vaccine.
Instead, the law directs families to file a claim with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) — a program that is difficult to navigate and compensates only a small percentage of people who apply.
Siri & Glimstad are assisting them in filing their VICP claim.
“If one baby can be saved because of something that we were able to share, then it’s worth it to us,” Mollie told CHD.TV.
Baby’s father: SIDS label isn’t enough
Since Josie’s death, Ryan has found PubMed studies that link sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) to routine vaccinations. PubMed articles are high-quality studies published by the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine.
For instance, a 29-year study found that 58% of all SIDS deaths happened within three days of vaccination, and 78.3% of all SIDS deaths occurred within seven days of vaccination. “It’s just too plain as day for us not to acknowledge it,” Ryan said.
According to Ryan, the state medical examiner kept trying to say, “Oh well, Josie was found on her belly,” as if that explained why she died.
As a paramedic who made his living ensuring people’s airways were unobstructed, Ryan told the medical examiner that her explanation didn’t add up. He said:
“It doesn’t matter if Josie was found on her belly, her head was found to the side where her airway was unobstructed. There were no pillows nearby. There were no blankets.
“She could maintain her airway. She could lift her head. She could lift up her whole body and roll over, back and forth. She was also able to bring her knees up to her chest. She was about to start crawling. She was way ahead of her age.”
Ryan said he requested that all of Josie’s tissue samples be preserved so an independent agency can perform an autopsy. The results will likely be included as evidence in the couple’s VICP claim.
Ryan expressed frustration at how state medical officials seemed uninterested in pinpointing what caused Josie’s death.
The medical examiner told him that in situations like Josie’s, the state typically rules that the situation was SIDS because the state won’t pay to have the type of testing necessary to prove that vaccines caused the death.
“It’s a funding thing,” he said, bitterly. “They should be trying to find out everything they can as the cause of death of a child. And the fact that they’re refusing to do that is just unreal to me.”’
Mollie agreed. “If a doctor tries to say it’s SIDS, that should be an immediate [cue to] start your research to prove otherwise,” she told CHD.TV.
Watch CHD.TV interview with Josie’s parents here:
- Baby Dies After Receiving 6 Shots for 12 Vaccines — Doctors Say ‘Catching Up’ Kids on Vaccines Is Common, and Dangerous
- 11-Week-Old ‘Anna’ Died Hours After Her ‘Routine’ Vaccines. Nearly 12 Years Later, a Court Ruled the Vaccines Killed Her
- ‘Double Tragedy’: Twins’ Deaths Likely Caused by Vaccines, Not Parents
- New Research Reveals How Vaccines May Cause SIDS in Some Infants
- Police Detective: 50% of Sudden Infant Deaths Happened Within 48 Hours of Vaccination — But No One Is Allowed to Say It
- ‘We Get Paid to Vaccinate Your Children’: Pediatrician Reveals Details of Big Pharma Payola Scheme
