In this episode of THE+TRIBUTE, Bailey, a young truck driver from Nelson, and his mother, advocate Aly Cook, discuss Bailey’s harrowing journey after his Pfizer jab – instant heart pain, systemic gaslighting, a battle with ACC and “vanishing” medical records…
Bailey (25 in 2021), pressured by mandates and a small loan, reluctantly got the vaccine to keep his dream job and new life in beautiful Central Otago.
“I decided to go, I thought: “Oh yeah, what’s the worst that could happen?” So I went in to the local pharmacy and got my first shot.”
He was given no warnings about myocarditis or pericarditis – known risks by then for young men, post-Rory Nairn’s tragic death. Rory Nairn had already tragically died from vaccine-induced myocarditis in November 2021.
En route from Cromwell to Christchurch, the pain hit:
“I could feel my heartbeat in my throat and out my chest. The pain is a pinching feeling, a shooting pain down your shoulder. Someone sort of grabbing something inside your chest and twisting it.”
Just six hours after his injection, Bailey pulled over his truck, and was wheeled in on an ambulance gurney to Ashburton Hospital, struggling for breath. Before a single physical examination had taken place, the narrative was already being written. Standing over a man in visible agony, the doctor delivered a verdict that was as much a warning as a dismissal: “Don’t let this put you off the second shot.”
His mother, Aly, remembers the terror:
“We had a phone call to say he was in an ambulance. I had begged him not to get it. I tried to say, ‘Come home, let’s ride this out.’ But he was going to lose his job. He was going to lose his home. The pressure was so great.”
Dismissed and diagnosed with “anxiety” despite clear ECG signs of pericarditis (later described by a cardiologist as impossible to miss), Bailey endured repeated hospital visits across Ashburton, Christchurch, Queenstown,and Nelson. Records vanished: ECGs not uploaded, blood tests “lost,” a cardiac referral “dropped off” the system—a direct violation of the Health (Retention of Health Information) Regulations 1996. Aly launched investigations into four DHBs:
“One hospital loses records, that’s an accident. But it seems very odd that all of them have lost them.”
In the presence of Bailey’s fiancée, a doctor issued a chilling verbal warning: “Bailey should never receive another vaccination unless he was positioned next to a crash cart (resuscitation trolley).” Aly wrote to the Christchurch ED doctor requesting that his verbal advice be formally documented in writing, the doctor denied ever having said it. This silence left Bailey in a clinical and legal vacuum; without a written specialist report, he had no evidence to present to the Director-General of Health (Ashley Bloomfield) for a medical exemption.
Refusing to risk his life, Bailey decided not to take the 2nd shot and he was forced out of his job. Bailey and his partner uprooted back to Nelson, living in his truck during lockdowns, reliant on Nurofen for pain that woke him nightly. “I’ve woken up countless times thinking, am I just going to cark it?”
As a heavy vehicle driver, he warns of public safety risks.
“You’ve got truck drivers driving around with heart issues and they’ve just accepted it because no one believes them. They don’t want a bar of it, they just did it to keep their jobs. You know, they’re rough guys, they don’t care.”
Christmas Eve 2022 brought a breakthrough – a sympathetic ED doctor finally consulted a cardiologist, leading to Bailey’s first formal diagnosis: “vaccine-induced pericarditis.” But relief was short-lived: ACC denied his claim for vaccine treatment injury compensation. Aly and Bailey fought back, and after endless loopholes and reviews, the ICRA finally quashed ACC’s decision in December 2024, approving Bailey for COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine-Induced Pericarditis.
“It’s a very exhausting process to be dealing with while you’re essentially suffering. No one deserves it.”
Aly’s OIAs reveal the scale: ACC payouts for vaccine injuries jumped from $145k annually pre-2021 to $11.4m by 2024 (now $18.98m per latest data), with only 1 in 4 claims approved. She also discovered under-40s ED visits for chest pain spiked in 2021 – also matched in Australia, where both countries rolled out vaccines pre-COVID waves.
Yet the pain persists, Bailey still suffers three attacks of chest pain every month and remains under the ongoing care of his doctor & cardiologist who has observed that pericarditis in her vaccine-injured patients deviates from pre-Covid norms, and is unresponsive to the typical three-month treatments. For Bailey, it’s an ongoing struggle with heart pain:
“I probably would have pinned him [my 25-year-old self] against a wall and gone, ‘Don’t do it. You’re going to regret it.’”
Bailey now begins the ACC Permanent Injury Compensation (PIC) process, 4 years and 2 months after his injury. He faces a system that calculates life in percentages. Aly vows:
“I’m in this for the long haul. I’m in it for not only my son, but everybody else that was injured as well. It’s so incredibly unjust.”
THE+TRIBUTE is a web series that gives voice to the Covid jab casualties – the silenced and abandoned.
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