A Nebraska mom on TikTok is bravely sharing and detailing her infant son’s vaccine reaction, recording videos and documenting each stage (which is also going to be useful for a claim with the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program) and sharing these videos with the world to raise public awareness of vaccine reactions.

Laura and Cody Napier’s healthy 15 month old baby Fox received a DTAP vaccine and MMR vaccine (waiting to be completely confirmed, he received two shots one in each leg) at a “wellness” appointment at 9 a.m. on August 20th.

Less than 12 hours later, dad Cody noticed that Fox was having what looked like muscle spasms in his left arm and left leg, and little Fox was also acting not well, so they brought him to the ER.

In the car, it’s hard to watch his blank gaze, drooling, and tightening of the arms and legs:

@foxystrong

Fox is 15 months old and he had his pediatric wellness check and immunizations Aug. 20th, 24 at 9 am. I sat in the back of the van with Fox as my husband Cody drove us to the Bryan West ER. #foxstrong#glorytogod

♬ original sound – Foxy’s voice

Mom Laura wrote an update and posted a video after Hospital admission:

“Tuesday August 20, 2024
9:40 pm
Fox’s oxygen dropped to the low 60s when we entered the ER in Lincoln at approximately 8:40 PM on Tuesday, August 20.
Once he was stabilized, he began to seize again.
His oxygen dropped again and they could not get his seizures under control with medication.
These videos were taken while we were waiting to see what was going to happen next.
There is a lot of time spent waiting and praying for a miracle.”

The muscle spasms turned out to be seizures, and because Fox needed more care he was flown to Omaha Children’s Hospital.

“Just before 12 am on August 20th.
Fox was intubated and took a helicopter to Children’s Hospital in Omaha.
Cody and I met my parents to give Felina Grace to them to watch, went home quick and packed. We were TERRIFIED!
As a mother of 7, I have never seen this happen before.
NOT EVER!
We packed and we prayed and we had no idea what we headed to Omaha.
We had no idea what we were in for.”

Fox had more seizures which the hospital was trying to control with anti-seizure medications. MRI and spinal tap tests were ordered.

After the results came in, baby Fox had inflammation and damage to the right part of his brain and a fluid from the brain confirmed HSV-1 virus (herpes simplex type 1 virus) activated in his brain causing meningitis. Antivirals were started.

His mom posted an update on Facebook:

“Foxy has viral meningitis.
(HSV ME)
I found out around 7 pm
I don’t have any other words right now.
I took the words above from the Internet, to explain briefly.
There is too much more information and so much unknown yet, and I’m tired.
I haven’t slept yet since I woke up this morning, but I needed to post an update.
We’ve got a long fight ahead of us,
but we will fight!!

My birthday gift was finding out about this and being here so that Foxy can have a chance to live and recover hopefully.
Gotta have Hope!

Oh… and Fox HELD this bottle for at least a minute today.
His left arm isn’t able to move normal or well at all, because of the swelling and fluid on the right side of his brain. But he held that bottle for at least a minute with his right hand and that’s awesome because Foxy was left-handed prior to Tuesday.”

The question remains, how did the vaccines reactivate the dormant virus in his brain?

@foxystrong

I dont spread false information 💯 #foxstrong #advocate #investigate #mamabear #praying #waitingongod #update #thankyouforyoursupport #pray #glorytogod

♬ original sound – Foxy’s voice

His brain suffered damage and inflammation from either the virus being reactivated, or the vaccine induced inflammation, or a combination of both.

Here are some of the MRI findings:

It has now been a few weeks, and thankfully, Fox is making a good recovery. It may take a while to see a complete and full recovery but his progress is amazing. He is walking and smiling. He is able to use both arms and both legs. The body can heal and recover.

Please help show your support of the Napier family by sharing their story and leaving positive comments. Because she has shared that her child experienced such a sudden onset of illness so close to vaccination, she has been accused of all the things. It’s tragic that the pro-v crowd treat parents who followed the CDC schedule this way when their child has a reaction, but this is how it goes. They never really understand unless it happens to them. And of course, we exist so people are warned it *could* happen to them.

Shared from his mama Laura Napier.

Evidence that vaccines can cause reactivation of dormant or latent viruses

There is no real question how the baby got herpes simplex type-1 virus. It’s an extremely prevalent virus, about 50-80% of the adult population is currently infected with HSV-1. The mother already said she is a carrier. Herpes simplex is an extremely common virus and is known for causing cold sores on the mouth. After infection, the virus typically remains dormant in the nerves. For the majority of people, they don’t even know they have it and it causes no symptoms. About 25% of children are infected with the virus by age 7.

The question is: how or what evidence is there that the vaccine enabled or triggered the herpes virus to reactivate and cause brain inflammation, or meningitis?

Did Fox receive both an MMR vaccine and a DTaP? Because “live” virus vaccines and inactivated vaccines can both cause reactivation of dormant viruses. Chalking this up to chance is illogical. Without the trigger of the vaccine causing immune stimulation, there is no other factor in Fox’s life to account for the sudden onset of his symptoms, including seizures, lethargy, drooling, blankness, muscle weakness which occurred within hours of vaccination.

A 1999 Lancet paper reported on three cases of viral reactivations after vaccination in “Reactivation of herpesvirus infections after vaccinations?”

“Varicella zoster and herpes simplex viruses cause latent infections by persisting in sensory nerves or satellite cells around neurons after primary infection. Reactivation has been associated with increasing age, HIV infection, and cancer in varicella zoster virus infection, and with physical or emotional stress, fever, exposure to ultraviolet light, tissue damage, and immunosuppression in herpes simplex virus infection.Three cases reported to the Swiss Drug Monitoring Centre SANZ provide evidence for reactivation of herpesvirus infections after vaccinations against other (non-herpes) viruses.”

“In patient 3, a 27-year-old white man without regular medication, herpes zoster developed in the second and third branches of the trigeminal nerve 1 day after vaccination against rabies (Lyssavac N, Berna) and Japanese encephalitis (JE-Vax, Connaught, Ontario, Canada) viruses. The clinical diagnosis was supported 2 weeks later by increased IgG and IgM antibody titres.”

“Varicella zoster and herpes simplex are not rare diseases. Therefore, we cannot completely rule out that the association between vaccination and reactivation of herpesvirus infections in our three patients may be by chance. However, the positive re-exposure in patient 1 and the development of herpes zoster in a young healthy man (patient 3) suggests a causal link. Vaccine-induced immunomodulation (eg, immunosuppressive effect of a pneumococcal vaccine,3 decreased alloreactivity after vaccination against hepatitis B,4 and suppression of cellmediated immunity by killed m e a s l e s v i r u s5 ) has been observed. The exact mechanism in our patients remains elusive, but vaccine-induced immunomodulation may be involved. Epidemiological studies are needed to elucidate the possible link between vaccination and reactivation of herpesvirus infections.”

A 2007 study “Risk of Serious Neurologic Disease After Immunization of Young Children in Britain and Ireland” enrolled children who developed neurologic disease over a 3-year period and examined their vaccine history.

“A total of 157 disease episodes from 155 children met the analytical case definition. There were 11 cases of herpes simplex encephalitis and 23 cases of primary human herpesvirus 6 and/or 7 infection.”

There was no evidence of a raised relative incidence of serious neurologic disease in any of the specified risk periods with the exception of a raised relative incidence of 5.68 in the 6–11 days after measles, mumps, rubella vaccine. Based on this relative incidence, between 3 and 6 of the 6 cases in this period were estimated to be attributable to the vaccine with a best estimate of 5. The 6 cases all had fever with convulsions lasting >30 minutes; in all but 1, there was complete recovery by discharge from hospital. Of the 5 patients who recovered, 1 had a concurrent primary human herpesvirus 6 infection and one a primary human herpesvirus 7.

Studies that have really narrow risk periods are frustrating, because in real life, a vaccine reaction may not adhere to a pre-specified risk window. For example, this study’s risk window for DTP in infants under 1 was 0-3 days or 0-7 days, and for MMR vaccine in infants over 1, the risk window was 6-11 days or 15-35 days. In real life, an infant over 1 year may get both DTaP and MMR at the same visit (perhaps not in England during that year). But how does Fox fit in? The British study didn’t examine DTaP after 1, and any reaction within one day of MMR vaccine was not examined.

The paper briefly discusses DTP vaccine:

Finally, it should be noted that we found no evidence of an increased relative incidence of serious neurologic disease with DTP/Hib vaccination given at 2, 3, and 4 months of age. This differs from the findings of the NCES, set up in response to concerns about pertussis vaccine and neurologic disease and which reported a relative risk of 3.0 within 3 days of DTP vaccine. At the time of the NCES, the DTP vaccine schedule was 3, 5, and 10 months. Farrington et al found a raised relative incidence for convulsions limited to the third dose of DTP vaccine.

There is a long history of DTP vaccine causing neurologic disorders, and one of the main reason that developed countries no long use the whole-cell DTP vaccine, trading it for the acellular DTaP vaccine in the 1990s, when SIDS rates coincidently began to fall in response to this less reactogenic vaccine, and other measures to reduce SIDS. But clearly, the DTaP and the live virus vaccines given before and after 1 contribute to neurological abnormalities.

The COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with all sorts of adverse reactions, but one of them is notably viral reactivation.

Here is a review published in May 2024 titled “Viral reactivation following COVID-19 vaccination: a review of the current literature“

“The aim of this article was to investigate the current literature regarding viral reactivations following COVID-19 vaccination, focusing attention on pityriasis rosea (PR), herpes zoster and herpes simplex. A total of 48 articles involving 2067 patients were selected. Of these, 32, 6 and 17 articles reported varicella zoster virus (VZV) reactivation (1758 patients), herpes simplex virus (HSV) (238 patients) onset and PR (71 patients), respectively…Possible pathogenetic mechanisms underlying viral reactivation are still not understood. Also, the possible correlations between vaccination and viral reactivation should be clarified.”

Unfortunately that article is behind a paywall, and there is no copy on Sci-Hub. But this is a review of 48 articles and those 48 articles are probably themselves not behind a paywall. There are so many articles that explored reactivation of viruses by the COVID-19 vaccine, there is definitely a mechanism for such a phenomenon related to vaccination.

Published in July 2024 is a case report “Reactivation of herpes simplex virus 2 presenting as recurrent acute retinal necrosis following COVID-19 vaccination”

We present the case of a 58-year-old Japanese woman with ARN (Acute retinal necrosis) in the left eye due to herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV2) two days after receiving the fifth dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The patient demonstrated an ARN history in the right eye and had been treated for it. This report suggests that patients with an ARN history might be at risk of ARN recurrence because of the reactivation of the herpes simplex virus induced by COVID-19 vaccination.

Another paper, published in September 2016 titled “Immunologic factors may play a role in herpes simplex virus 1 reactivation in the brain and retina after influenza vaccination” investigates the association between vaccination and reactivation of herpes simplex:

“Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) is a nearly ubiquitous human pathogen, remaining dormant in its human host the majority of the time. The interaction between HSV-1 and the immune system represents a complicated balance of power that allows the virus to persist in the host for a lifetime. However, disruptions in the immune system can activate the virus with the potential to cause devastating infections in the central nervous system (CNS). We present a patient who suffered three consecutive yearly HSV-1 CNS episodes (encephalitis, seizure, and retinitis), each within days of his influenza vaccination. We highlight subtle immunologic defects in this patient that may have allowed unchecked viral replication and resultant disease manifestations, as well as the potential role of influenza vaccine in tipping this balance in favor of HSV-1.”

Another case report, this one from March 2017 titled “HSV2 reactivation and myelitis following influenza vaccination” details a similar relationship between herpes simplex 2 and influenza vaccination: