An Idaho man who received a COVID-19 vaccine when his employer “strongly implied” he should get the shot was left paralyzed 10 days later from a blood clot.
Doug Cameron, who previously avoided getting a COVID-19 vaccine, was 64 and healthy when he received his first and only Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine on April 5, 2021.
He was a manager at TLK Dairy Farms in Mountain Home, Idaho, where he had worked for 15 years.
COVID-19 vaccines had been available for months at local pharmacies when TLK Dairy Farms hosted an on-site vaccination clinic to encourage vaccination.
“They were seeing that a lot of people weren’t getting the shot, and they decided to bring the shot to the farm,” Cameron told The Defender. His company’s leadership team didn’t mandate that he get the shot. “They just strongly implied” that they expected it, he said.
Cameron said the “intimidation” to get a COVID-19 shot “was extremely strong all the way around” for him and his co-workers.
“People can deny it all they want,” he said, “but the fact of the matter is that if they had never brought it and never pushed it on people, I know a lot of people would’ve never got it — I am one of those people.”
Cameron told them he didn’t want a COVID-19 shot. “They said, ‘Well, you’re a manager and it’d be good if your name was first on the list of people’” who signed up to receive a shot.
Cameron said, “Well, OK,” and got the shot. He sat for 15 minutes as instructed by the clinic workers, then hopped back in his pickup truck to continue working around the 10,000-acre farm.
That was Monday. The next day, he didn’t feel quite right. His hips hurt a lot. Sitting or lying down was uncomfortable. “That just kept getting worse,” he said.
More symptoms occurred, including urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Cameron wanted to finish his workweek. He told his wife, Carla, he would go to a clinic on Saturday to get checked out.
Local clinic refused to see him
On Saturday, Cameron called St. Luke’s clinic in Mountain Home. “I’ve got problems and I think it’s associated with the COVID shot,” he said.
The clinic staff asked Cameron if he had received his shot at their clinic. “No,” he said. “Then we don’t want to see you,” they responded.
On Sunday, Cameron went to the emergency room at the local hospital where doctors declared him positive for a COVID-19 infection. They ordered bloodwork and sent him to Boise for an MRI.
The MRI and bloodwork failed to reveal the cause of Cameron’s symptoms. “Go home and if anything else happens, you let us know,” the Boise doctors told him.
‘I went to bed about 10 o’clock. Two o’clock I woke up and was paralyzed’
Cameron stayed home from work due to his COVID-19 diagnosis. However, he didn’t feel any COVID-19 symptoms — no cough or fever — so he kept working at his own farm where he and his wife had 50 head of cattle.
On Wednesday evening, Cameron felt like he’d “just drank poison.” He told his wife he was going to lie down to sleep.
“I went to bed about 10 o’clock. Two o’clock I woke up and was paralyzed,” he said.
An ambulance rushed him to a hospital first in Mountain Home, then in Boise. “The next thing I know, they’re doing all these tests. They can’t figure out what’s the matter with me.”
Cameron kept telling the staff that it was the vaccine. They kept responding, “No, it’s not the vaccine.”
“Well, that’s the only thing that it could be,” Cameron kept saying, as he had no prior history of significant illness and was not on any medications.
Two days before he developed paralysis, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) paused the use of the J&J COVID-19 vaccine due to reports of blood clots. “You’d think the doctors would kind of put two and two together,” Cameron said.
Although most staff didn’t openly admit the vaccine had caused his paralysis, Cameron said some of his doctors filed a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) report, signaling that they thought the vaccine was the cause.
“Eventually, they found that I had a blood clot in my leg and it went up my spine and hemorrhaged,” Cameron said. The result was transverse myelitis — inflammation of the spinal cord — and paralysis.
At one point, a nurse gave him a drink of water and he began choking because the paralysis — which began in his lower body — had reached his throat. The staff put him on a ventilator, gave him remdesivir and fentanyl, and kept him in the ICU for two weeks.
While there, he began receiving plasmapheresis, a treatment for cleaning the blood. Later, he went to a rehab center in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he continued the treatment and did physical therapy.
By July 2021, Cameron regained muscle use in his neck and upper chest. However, he remains paralyzed from the diaphragm and below. Cameron shared documentation with The Defender to corroborate his story.
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J&J ‘dropped him like a hot rock’
When The Defender asked Cameron if he felt J&J had taken responsibility for the injury their product caused him, he said, “No.”
“We contacted Johnson & Johnson,” his wife Carla said. “They’re very much aware of what happened to Doug, but they have dropped him like a hot rock.”
The U.S. government also has yet to take responsibility for the injury caused by J&J’s vaccine — which it authorized for emergency use on Feb. 27, 2021.
Carla and Doug in January 2022 submitted a COVID-19 vaccine injury claim with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). The program “provides compensation for covered serious injuries or deaths that occur as the result of the administration or use of certain countermeasures,” including COVID-19 vaccines.
Carla said that whenever she calls to check in on their claim, she is told, “Yeah, it’s still sitting on somebody’s desk for medical review.”
Doug’s injury resulted in about $2 million in medical expenses, she said. The couple said they’re grateful to have insurance — but insurance hasn’t covered everything. Doug’s paralysis has cost them roughly $170,000 out-of-pocket, forcing them to sell their cattle.
“We went through every bit of savings we had,” Doug said. “And there was a GoFundMe campaign — we went through that, too.”
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Fired for not being able to walk
More devastating yet, when Cameron tried to return to his job at TLK Dairy Farms, his boss fired him because he could no longer walk. “We can’t have you,” the boss said.
“And I thought, ‘shit, I got the goddamn shot because you wanted me to get the shot — and now here I am paralyzed. I want to come back to work and you don’t want me,’” Cameron said.
Cameron said he still finds it hard to believe that his employer of 15 years would turn him away. “I worked on their dreams and they took away my dreams. They’re still living their dream, and I’m living my nightmare.”
He tries to stay positive and help other people where he can, including speaking publicly about his injury to educate others on the risks of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Cameron spoke to the Idaho Southwest District Health Board before its historic vote to remove COVID-19 vaccines from its clinics. He knows many people injured by Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 shots. He believes all the COVID-19 shots were inadequately tested for safety before being pushed on the public. “The people of the world were the guinea pigs.”
After TLK Dairy Farms let him go, other businesses were thankfully open to hiring Cameron — who still has the use of his arms and maneuvers in a wheelchair. He started a job at Lowe’s in Boise where he enjoyed helping people pick out materials for building projects.
However, the 65-mile commute each way was taxing so he took a position at JK Armament, an ammunition company just a four-minute drive from his house.
The people at his new job treat him well and he appreciates the work, but it’s all indoors, Cameron said. “I’d love to be back on the farm.”
