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(LifeSiteNews) — A New York medical professional who spoke with Truth for Health Foundation CEO Dr. Lee Vliet in the December 7 “Fired for Freedom” conference said she was sidelined and ultimately fired after reporting the adverse events she witnessed in connection with COVID-19 vaccinations.

Deborah Conrad, a hospital physician’s assistant who worked for 12 years as director of the Advanced Practice Providers for Rochester Regional Medical Center in New York, told Dr. Vliet she began seeing patients present with “unusual” medical conditions in early 2021 after the first COVID-19 shots were rolled out to the public.

Conrad’s address begins at 29:40 in the video below.

“Pretty much right away, we started noticing patients coming into the emergency room and being admitted to the hospital for all sorts of weird, unusual medical conditions that they didn’t have before the vaccines,” she said, adding that some of the conditions “occurred within days of the vaccine,” while others occurred within “weeks and months.” 

“It was very noticeable to both myself and many of my colleagues,” said Conrad, who is medically trained and licensed as both a Registered Nurse and a physician’s assistant. 

Conrad said she began to do “a little research” and was surprised to discover that healthcare providers are legally required to report vaccine-related adverse events to the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

“That was never given to us in any informational email or any sort of education whatsoever as part of the vaccine rollout,” she explained. 

Conrad said she began reporting adverse events in several patients and then told her leadership that she would begin to educate other staff about reporting through VAERS and “get a more efficient system in place.”

“Well, that became very overwhelming, very quickly,” she said, explaining that she had begun spending her off-time “doing various reports and follow ups with the FDA and the CDC.”

She said she ultimately told her hospital leadership she would need help since she was overwhelmed with the reporting, and ultimately reached out directly to the FDA for assistance.

“In four short weeks, I had reported over 50 patients and I didn’t like what I was seeing,” she said. “So I actually reached out to the FDA myself in two emails and explained to them about what I was seeing.” 

Conrad said she “never heard anything back” from the FDA, and when she reached out to the New York State Department of Health she was told they could not help her, and directed her to speak with her own hospital’s leadership again.

“So again, I went back to leadership and their response was that they wanted to do an audit on the various reports that I did,” she said. “So I sent them about 14 very good patients that had very good stories. And their conclusion was that I was over-reporting, even though [the cases] met the exact same criteria that VAERS says is part of the reporting.” 

If Conrad’s hospital was not reporting adverse events related to vaccines in large numbers, they would not be alone. The VAERS database has a reputation for underreporting, giving rise to speculation that actual vaccine-related injuries may occur at much higher frequency than supposed.

A 2010 Harvard-executed study commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries” are reported to VAERS, suggesting the actual numbers of deaths and injuries may be significantly higher than reported.

Regardless of the precedent for underreporting to the VAERS system, Conrad said she was told by her leadership that she was “over-reporting” vaccine adverse events, and that “nobody else is doing this.”

Conrad said she responded by saying, “Well, that’s exactly my point. Nobody knows they’re supposed to do it. We need to educate our staff and our health care providers [that] this is what we need to do to keep patients safe and make sure that these vaccines are safe and effective for all.” 

The hospitalist physician’s assistant said that’s when things began to change at her workplace.

“The more I pushed forward, the more pushback I got,” she said, explaining that the hospital became “a very uncomfortable working environment.”

“You felt censored. You were called an anti-vaxxer, and I knew my job was on the line just by the pushback that I was getting,” she said. “There was so much division within the hospital.”

Conrad explained that ultimately her hospital required its employees to identify themselves by whether or not they had gotten the COVID-19 jab. 

“Everybody kind of knew your business, and it seemed very divisive,” she said, adding that the uncomfortable environment wasn’t enough to keep her from doing the VAERS reporting she felt she should do and eventually going public with her story.

Conrad said she believes that’s why she was terminated from her position on October 6, 2021.

She said hospital employees “surrounded me one day in the middle of my shift, took me in a room, asked me all sorts of questions about me coming forward.”

Ultimately she was asked whether she would leave the premises on her own volition or be walked out by the hospital staff, “and that was it.”

“They terminated me, and there was no reason on my termination letter,” she said. “It’s quite awful.”

Conrad said there were many patients who suffered adverse events which she was not permitted to report, since she had been told she could not file VAERS reports for any patients other than her own.

“So I have probably about 75 patients from my hospital that various reports were never done on because I was not allowed to,” she said. “They told me they checked with their legal department, and the legal department said that I couldn’t report. So, it’s awful.”

“I was terminated for trying to do the right thing, trying to keep the American public safe, trying to really understand,” Conrad said.

Addressing criticism of VAERS as a poor system for cataloging vaccine adverse events, Conrad said it’s nonetheless “the only system we have.”

“[W]e should be utilizing it in the United States and we’re not,” she said.