The Veterans the Government Won’t Count

I. Essential WorkerOnce a Marine, always a Marine. The pandemic called, and he answered.

Eric Andrew Perez is a native New Yorker and an honorably discharged, disabled U.S. Marine Corps veteran who was once homeless. When New York locked down in 2020 and the virus was killing hundreds of New Yorkers a day, he kept showing up, loading and delivering food and essential goods for FreshDirect out of its St. Ann’s Avenue facility in the Bronx, to families throughout the tristate area who couldn’t leave home.

In December 2020, the newly authorized COVID-19 vaccines were not available to essential workers like him. The first doses went to health-care workers and nursing-home residents, and next to older New Yorkers. His VA care team advised him that joining a vaccine trial was his best chance of getting a COVID-19 vaccine. That month, he enrolled in the AstraZeneca AZD1222 vaccine trial at the VA’s Manhattan campus on East 23rd Street. He received his first dose on December 22, 2020. He recalls fainting the moment he was injected; the study’s note from that day records no reaction. He was given his second dose on January 19, 2021.

On February 11, 2021, twenty-three days after that second dose, he had knee surgery. No one warned him that the vaccine he had just received was being studied for links to blood clots, and no clot-prevention treatment was given. So when the pain became extreme, he thought it was normal recovery. For twelve days a life-threatening clot went undetected, until a Doppler ultrasound at Lenox Hill found it in a deep vein of his right calf on February 23, 2021. He was sent straight to the VA emergency department, where he rated his pain 10 out of 10. The VA’s own ultrasound that afternoon came back negative, but the ER accepted Lenox Hill’s finding and started him on a blood thinner.

On March 23, 2021, still in a leg brace and on blood thinners, he made his way by public transit to a scheduled study visit. That day a study sub-investigator unblinded his record. The form states that he had received the placebo, and that he had asked to be unblinded so he could get an authorized vaccine. The same study team logged his clot as an “adverse event of special interest,” a category that requires notice to AstraZeneca, and marked it not related to the study shot. Ten days later, the VA gave him his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

II. The claimPlacebo on paper. A clot in his leg. A claim the system can’t find.

The PREP Act shields vaccine makers from most lawsuits. People injured by a pandemic vaccine have one place to turn: the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), a small office inside HHS’s Health Resources and Services Administration. According to the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s own auditor, the program received about 13,000 COVID-19-era claims in a few years, compared with fewer than 500 in its entire first decade. By mid-2024 it had decided only about a quarter of them, and found roughly 3 percent of those eligible for compensation.² Eric filed his claim, CICP2105170029, in May 2021.

On April 30, 2024, three years after he filed, Eric logged in to add evidence to his claim and couldn’t. He entered his correct claim number. The government’s portal answered:

He wrote to the program repeatedly between 2024 and 2026. On February 9, 2026, CICP denied the claim. The denial letter quotes a trial nurse’s phone note, “patient has cast and is unable to come for day 57 visit,” and treats a cast as a risk factor for blood clots. His surgeon’s operative note says no cast was applied, and his VA doctor recorded a brace six weeks after surgery. The letter also relies on the study’s record that he received a placebo. Read the denial letter → · See the disputed passages marked →

Seven days after the denial, his claim file vanished from the portal. Three weeks later he asked for reconsideration and for a written explanation of “any portal disruption or record deletion.” HRSA acknowledged the request on March 10. Seven months later, he is still waiting for either answer.

III. The dataVeterans’ safety data, stamped “trade secret”

Eric wanted to know whether other veteran volunteers had experienced what he did. He asked the VA and the FDA for counts only: how many veteran participants had adverse events, serious clotting events, or died. He asked for no participants’ names.

The FDA cited two exemptions: (b)(3), for a federal law that limits release of clinical-trial information, and (b)(4), which covers “trade secrets and commercial or financial information.” The VA’s headquarters said it held no records and referred the request to VA New York Harbor.

IV. The courtsThe case no court will hear. Six courts, not one hearing.

In May 2021 Eric took his case to federal court in Manhattan (SDNY), where the AstraZeneca trial had taken place. A year later the court sent him away without looking at the evidence. Under the PREP Act, it said, it:

The PREP Act sends those claims to Washington, D.C., so Eric filed there (No. 22-cv-01560). In September 2022 that court dismissed this case too. A second New York case (No. 24-cv-356) and its appeal to the Second Circuit ended the same way. In none of them did a judge hear the evidence.

One test could settle the placebo question: the antibody results from blood the trial drew from Eric three times. In July 2024 the court clerk issued a subpoena for them. A week later the court ruled it was too early for discovery. The case was dismissed before discovery ever began. See the subpoena and the order →

Judge the record for yourself. These are the rulings against him, word for word.

V. The documentsRead it yourself

Twelve documents from five years of claims, requests and court cases. Every quote above comes from them. Only personal contact details are redacted.

The CICP claim

• CICP denial letterFebruary 9, 2026 · 4 pagesPDF
• CICP denial letter, annotatedDisputed passages highlighted, with Eric’s notes · 4 pagesPDF
• CICP request for reconsiderationMarch 3, 2026 · 4 pagesPDF
• CICP portal screenshots (Exhibit A)2024–2026 · 11 pagesPDF

The records requests

• VA FOIA response 22-01365-FDecember 20, 2021 · 4 pagesPDF
• FDA FOIA denial 2024-5587July 23, 2024 · 4 pagesPDF

The courts

• S.D.N.Y. order, 21-cv-4844, ECF 89May 10, 2022 · 5 pagesPDF
• Docket sheet, S.D.N.Y. 1:21-cv-04844Full case history · 17 pagesPDF
• Docket sheet, D.D.C. 1:22-cv-01560Full case history · 7 pagesPDF
• S.D.N.Y. subpoena for trial blood results, and order blocking discovery24-cv-356, ECF 70 & 75 · July 2024 · 4 pagesPDF
• D. Md. order, 8:26-cv-01374, ECF 9April 9, 2026 · 6 pagesPDF
• 4th Cir. judgment, No. 26-1427September 30, 2026 · 5 pagesPDF

VI. How to helpOne Marine has fought six courts without a lawyer. He doesn’t have to do it alone.