by Sharon Rondeau
(May 21, 2025) — On May 15, founder of “The Highwire” Del Bigtree interviewed in person three individuals severely impaired in 2021 after receiving COVID-19 vaccines.
The program aired just as the film “Follow the Silenced” was released to the public after its global premiere at the Santa Monica International Film Festival in March.
Andre Cherry of Philadelphia, Nikki Holland of Nashville, and Doug Cameron of Idaho appeared in Bigtree’s studio to describe their lives after suffering horrific side effects and becoming wheelchair-bound; all are featured in the one-hour, 43-minute movie.
Produced by Mikki Willis and directed by Matthew Lynn Guthrie, the film largely tells the story of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout, some of the people who suffered severe side effects after receiving shots and their as-yet unsuccessful struggle to obtain recognition and medical help from U.S. health agencies.
From their pain, disabilities and battle against government-propagated censorship, react19.org was born, co-founder Brianne Dressen explains.
The organization has been able to fund treatment options for those suffering, co-founder Dr. Joel Wallskog added, including those of a young girl who lost bladder control, suffered contortions and was placed in an institution with a mental-illness diagnosis prior to her receiving a grant for medical care.
Cherry, who was accompanied by his younger brother Christian, now his full-time caregiver, was a 21-year-old college student majoring in English when he took the vaccine and thereafter experienced severe tremors and paralysis, forcing him to put his education in abeyance.
Holland was a physical therapist and single mother of three active children when after taking the vaccine, she became unable to breathe and incurred vocal-cord damage requiring a tracheotomy.
She was engaged to be remarried when she became disabled, Holland said, which ended the relationship.
Cameron was a 64-year-old rancher and farm manager who said at the time of the vaccine, he was “working on other people’s dreams” as well as his own of a 35-acre homestead and 35 head of cattle, became paralyzed, unable to breathe and was placed on a ventilator for an extended time. Due to skyrocketing medical expenses, he was forced to sell off his homestead, he recounted.
His symptoms began within 24 hours of receiving the vaccine, he said, and worsened over the next ten days. At that point, he said he told his wife, “I feel as if I drank poison.”
“Four hours later” in the middle of the night, he said, he awakened paralyzed after which blood clots in his spine were discovered.
He marveled that his wife, now of 42 years, remained with him. At one point he told a nurse he wanted to die, he said, and attempted to pull out the ventilator tube.
The interview can be seen in its entirety here.