The wife of a Florida doctor who died 15 days after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine told reporters at USA Today and the Daily Mail that her husband was “perfectly healthy” before he got the vaccine.
Heidi Neckelmann said her husband, 56-year-old Dr. Gregory Michael, “sought emergency care three days after the shot because he had dots on his skin that indicated internal bleeding.”
Michael received the vaccine on Dec. 18 at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, where he’d worked for 12 years as an OB-GYN. He died on Jan. 3 after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke related to a lack of platelets, a condition called thrombocytopenia, or as the Daily Mail reported, acute idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP).
Neckelmann told the Daily Mail:
“He was in very good health. He didn’t smoke, he drank alcohol once in a while but only socially. He worked out, we had kayaks, he was a deep sea fisherman.
“They tested him for everything you can imagine afterwards, even cancer, and there was absolutely nothing else wrong with him.”
Pfizer, in a statement to USA today, said the vaccine maker was aware of and “actively investigating” the death, but also added “we don’t believe at this time that there is any direct connection to the vaccine.”
Pfizer also told USA Today:
“There is no indication — either from large clinical trials or among people who have received the vaccine since the government authorized its use last month – that it could be connected to thrombocytopenia.”
But Neckelmann told the Daily Mail that in her mind, her husband’s death was “100% linked” to the vaccine.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) President Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN, said ITP is a well-known adverse event associated with vaccinations.
The vaccine most often implicated is the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, where the disease occurs in approximately 1 in every 25,000 to 40,000 doses of the vaccine, Redwood said. ITP has also been associated with hepatitis A and B virus (HBV), human papilloma virus (HPV), varicella-zoster, diphteria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTap), polio and pneumococcus vaccines.
According to Redwood, a study comparing adverse effects following influenza vaccination found that ITP was the third most common autoimmune condition (after Guillain Barre and rheumatoid arthritis).
Redwood also pointed out that ITP has been reported to occur following exposure to drugs containing polyethylene glycol (PEG), a compound used in both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
“Considering that according to the United States Court of Federal Claims, cases of ITP have been compensated in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), it is completely disingenuous for vaccine manufacturers to deny this risk,” Redwood said.
As Neckelmann told the Daily Mail, Michael suffered no immediate reaction to the vaccine, but three days later he noticed petechiae — spots of red indicative of bleeding beneath the skin — on his hands and feet.
