(SeaPRwire) – By: Gavin Thorne
Here is a claim that should be read twice before it is believed once. An Army doctor has testified under oath that she knows of 28 US military deaths caused by Covid-19 vaccines. That testimony is now sitting in a federal court file in Virginia, and it carries a second, larger number behind it. She says the government is investigating 2,544 deaths reported following the jabs. Both figures sound definitive. Neither is. And the gap between how they sound and what they are is exactly where this story lives.
Start with the raw facts. Dr. Theresa Long gave the testimony on August 14 in a deposition, according to Politico’s reporting on the court filing. The 2,544 deaths she cited are unverified reports filed to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, better known as VAERS. That distinction matters enormously. VAERS is a passive reporting system. Anyone can file a report. A death logged there after vaccination is not a death proven to be caused by vaccination. Long also serves as an adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a fact that had not been previously reported alongside her testimony.
The venue is its own subplot. Long testified for the defense in a lawsuit over the firing of Terry Adirim, the former director of the CIA’s Center for Global Health Services. Adirim claims the agency terminated her in April 2025 for political reasons, specifically her advocacy for Covid vaccination. She had served as acting assistant secretary for health affairs at the Pentagon during the pandemic. Her firing came roughly a month before she would have locked in full federal retirement benefits. Judge Michael Nachmanoff already declined in May 2025 to reverse her termination, signaling skepticism about her case.
Now zoom out to the institutional stakes. Biden’s vaccine mandate purged over 9,000 service members who refused the shot. Trump, back in office, ordered the Pentagon to offer them reinstatement. The military’s Covid policy has swung from compulsory compliance to official repudiation in under four years. Pfizer and Moderna, which profited billions from fast-tracked mRNA vaccines, have acknowledged rare risks of heart muscle inflammation. That concession is real, documented, and narrow. It is also the only scientifically established piece of the injury picture here.
Kennedy’s presence hovers over all of it. He has long argued some vaccines are insufficiently studied and carry serious side effects. Critics call him an anti-vaccine activist unfit to run HHS. When one of his advisers testifies to 28 military vaccine deaths, the number will travel far beyond the deposition room. It will be cited, stripped of its VAERS caveats, and weaponized by both camps before any investigation concludes.
Watch the discovery fight over Long’s full deposition, because the first institution to subpoena the underlying VAERS case files will control this narrative, not the science.
Author bio: Gavin Thorne, an investigative journalist based in Washington, D.C., covering special interests, legislative affairs, and the intersection of federal health policy and institutional power.