Mary Talley Bowden on vaccine injury: what the evidence says · JRE #2335
SUBJECT: VACCINE INJURY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
have applied, 30 people. On average, the award is like $4,000 for these people. It's horrible.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The relevant program is the federal Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which handles COVID-19 vaccine injury claims. Congressional Research Service analysis confirms that CICP pays only reasonable medical expenses, lost employment income, and a death benefit, and does not cover pain and suffering, which keeps individual awards small. That report also documents an overwhelming denial rate: as of the April 2025 update, HRSA had decided 4,111 of 13,764 COVID-19 countermeasure claims and denied 4,044 of them (98.4%), finding only 67 eligible for compensation (1.6%). Consistent with those limits, published tallies of the small number of paid COVID-19 claims show most awards clustered in the low four figures (roughly $1,000 to $5,500 for common injuries such as myocarditis), so Bowden's figure of an average award around $4,000 for the few claimants who are paid is roughly accurate, though a handful of severe-injury outliers were far larger.