A service member who earlier this year blew the whistle and disclosed data from a Pentagon medical database showing a spike in the rate of myocarditis in the military in 2021, after the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, is going public.
The whistleblower is active-duty Navy Medical Service Corps officer Lt. Ted Macie. He has also revealed new data showing a substantial rise in accidents, assaults, self-harm, and suicide attempts in the military in 2021, compared to the average from 2016 to 2021.
This includes a 147 percent increase in intentional self-harm incidents among service members, and an 828 percent increase in injuries from assaults.
Lt. Macie told The Epoch Times that he began “keeping an eye on" a defense medical database when another whistleblower alerted him to a rise in health-related incidents in the winter of 2021/2022.
The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) is a depository of all diagnoses—recorded using International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes—when an active service member is seen on- or off-base by a military or civilian provider. The database does not include any personally identifiable information of service members.
In January, Lt. Macie and his wife traveled to Washington with a report of the data he collected from DMED.
It showed that diagnoses of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, jumped 130.5 percent in 2021 when compared to the average from the years 2016 to 2020. Myocarditis is a serious condition that can lead to death.
All four of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized in the United States can cause myocarditis, according to U.S. officials. COVID-19 can also cause myocarditis, though some experts say the data on that front is weaker.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated the vaccines in 2021, a requirement that remained in place until Congress forced its withdrawal in late 2022.
The data also showed spikes in diagnoses of pulmonary embolism (41.2 percent), blood clots in the lungs, ovarian dysfunction (38.2 percent), and "complications and ill-defined descriptions of heart disease" (37.7 percent).
DMED Data
Lt. Macie downloaded the data almost a year after the Pentagon said it fixed a data corruption issue with the DMED.
In 2022, other military whistleblowers reported shocking spikes in disease rates after the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccine. But the Pentagon responded that those figures were not correct because some diagnoses in the years 2016 to 2020 had not been counted, an issue stemming from "corrupt" data.
After the Pentagon said the issue was corrected, Lt. Macie and others—including First Lt. Mark Bashaw, a preventive medicine officer in the Army, Navy Lt. Billy Mosley, Army Surgeon Lt. Col. Theresa Long, and Army doctor Maj. Samuel Sigoloff—noticed that there were still concerning signs of increases in diagnoses, such as myocarditis and pulmonary embolism.
Since word spread that Lt. Macie was the only active-duty member at his command who didn’t receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and was actively suing the secretary of defense, Lt. Macie said people began to come to him in confidence telling him about adverse reactions, which they were convinced were “from the shot,” he said. “These anecdotal, but compelling personal injuries, were a motivator to get things on the right track.”
After verifying Lt. Macie's report with the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the top Republican on that panel, sent a letter (pdf) to Mr. Austin in March asking the Pentagon to confirm Lt. Macie's data.
Lt. Macie had suspected the Pentagon would not respond, based on his experience of previous requests made within the department going unfulfilled.
“In the event our suspicions were correct, I kept additional data to reveal as soon as the data we brought [to Washington] was confirmed, or after being ignored for some time,” he said.
“Much to my surprise,” said Lt. Macie, the Pentagon, in a July reply (pdf) to Mr. Johnson's letter, confirmed that his data was accurate.
In the Pentagon's response, Gilbert Cisneros Jr., undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, pointed to data on the rate of cases per 100,000 person-years, a way to measure risk across a certain period of time. For almost all the conditions that showed an increase in cases in 2021, he stated, the new case rate was higher for service members with a prior COVID-19 infection than for those with a prior COVID-19 vaccination.
"This suggests that it was more likely to be [COVID-19] infection and not COVID-19 vaccination that was the cause," Mr. Cisneros stated.
Lt. Macie said he plans to bring the additional data he kept "up my chain of command with the aim of a resolution and validation for injured service members, but I’m not holding my breath."
Lt. Macie has also brought this new data to the office of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), hoping to get the attention of the House Armed Services Committee, a panel Mr. Gaetz sits on. Lt. Macie is not aware of what Mr. Gaetz and his staff will do, but the lawmaker's office acknowledged in June that “they will take a look,” he said. The Epoch Times has reached out to Mr. Gaetz's office for comment.
Rise in Accidents, Self-Harm
According to his research, health-related incidents in 2021 rose substantially above the five-year average from 2016 to 2020. “As some may expect,” he said, “internal injuries like myocarditis (130 percent), tinnitus (42 percent), and cerebral infarction (stroke) (43.5 percent) are on the rise.”
But it was Macie’s wife who became curious, asking about other types of injuries.
“What about external cause morbidities, like burns, accidents, self-inflicted harm, and injuries that are not expected to be associated with the COVID shot?” he said.
With the new data he discovered, the following incidents exhibited increases in 2021 above the five-year average: exposure to forces of nature (773 percent), water transport accidents (7,400 percent), land transport vehicle (526 percent), suicide attempts (33 percent), assault (828 percent), slipping, tripping, stumble and falls (471 percent), and intentional self-harm (147 percent).
Some of these not only increased in 2021 but continued to rise in 2022. The Epoch Times has viewed screenshots of this data from the DMED.
Historically, if the Pentagon noticed a trend in certain areas like abuse and suicide, he said, the department would hold a safety stand-down—a military-wide mandatory training and review where all commands require one hundred percent participation.”
“What will higher-ranking general officers, the Surgeon General, Defense Health Agency, and Joint Chiefs do when they receive word that ICD codes/injuries for these incidents are on the rise?” said Lt. Macie.
“Soon, we’ll see if the same people who claim that the service member is their top priority actually show that through their action,” he added.
According to Lt. Macie, there are a few possibilities concerning the new data collected.
“If the data is correct, and is confirmed by [the Pentagon], more than just a stand-down needs to happen. Rising problems like self-harm, suicide attempts, accidents, and assault must be addressed immediately, not just the mess of [vaccine] injuries.”
He noted that the Pentagon may, for a second time, reply saying the data is incorrect, even though the department previously said they've resolved the data corruption issues in the system to prevent future errors. But such a reply would raise even more questions going to the integrity of the database and whether there is a cover-up at play, he projected.
Lt. Macie hopes that Congress will press the Pentagon for answers concerning this new data.
But if lawmakers fail to do this, "the people need to step up to hold our government accountable.”
Lt. Macie emphasized that his views do not reflect those of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Navy. The Pentagon didn't return inquiries by The Epoch Times seeking an explanation for the rise in external cause morbidities.
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
