[00:00:00]

Shawn Buckley

Our first witness is Patricia Leidl. I’m sorry, Leidl. And names are important, so I apologize Patricia. Patricia, can you please state your full name for the record, spelling your first and last name.

Patricia Leidl

My first name is Patricia, and my last name is Leidl and it’s spelled L-E-I-D-L.

Shawn Buckley

And Patricia, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Patricia Leidl

So help me God.

Shawn Buckley

You actually have a very interesting background. You are a former director of communications at the World Health Organization. You were their international communications advisor as I understand it?

Patricia Leidl

I was actually a chief of communications with the HIV branch at WHO. I was also a writer there and a media advisor, a managing editor at the United Nations Population Fund in New York. So I’ve had quite a long UN career. Then after I left WHO, I started to do work in the field for various U.S. aid organizations or projects. I worked in the field in Afghanistan and Yemen, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 13 years, or until I became vaccine-injured.

Shawn Buckley

Now you haven’t been called here today to speak about the World Health Organization or the United Nations. You’re actually here to tell your personal story, and that involves vaccination. My first question for you is, why did you decide to get vaccinated?

Patricia Leidl

Well, as mentioned earlier, I worked in international relations. I was living in Victoria. I was between contracts, and I desperately wanted to work again. I was up for a job in Europe, which I was shortlisted for, and the requirement of that was that in order to fly, I had to be double-vaxxed.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, and my understanding is that in April and June of 2021, you received two shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Patricia Leidl

That’s correct.

Shawn Buckley

Can you tell us what happened?

Patricia Leidl

Well, the first shot was uneventful. I received a letter from the BC Ministry of Health stating that because I’m a vulnerable person, i.e., I have a few pre-existing autoimmune problems and some high blood pressure problems, but, lucky me, I could go down and get my first dose. So I did, at the Conference Centre in Victoria.

Shawn Buckley

I’m just going to slow you down. So actually, before your first dose, you get a letter from the government advising you that you should get vaccinated even though you have some pre-existing conditions.

Patricia Leidl

Well, it was because I have pre-existing conditions that they deemed me to be a “vulnerable” person. Think about that.

Shawn Buckley

And yet the message was to get vaccinated.

Patricia Leidl

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley

Had you ever gotten a letter from the government before, just unsolicited to basically give you medical advice?

Patricia Leidl

Only with pap smear screening.

Shawn Buckley

Okay.

Patricia Leidl

That’s fairly routine. Anyhow, so I dutifully trotted down, and I got my first jab, and it was completely uneventful: no swelling arm, no headaches, no nothing. And then I received a second letter about four weeks later giving me a date to go down to the same conference centre and get my second jab. Again, I went down. I did notice that the nurse practitioner did not aspirate the needle in both cases. So I went home, and I did expect—

Shawn Buckley

Can I actually ask you— I mean you’re being videoed, and you put a computer screen up in front of you. Can I actually ask you to move that out of the way and not follow notes, but just share with us. Is that okay?

Patricia Leidl

Okay. Sure.

Shawn Buckley

So can you carry on?

Patricia Leidl

Yeah, so I had the second jab and went home and felt a little bit poorly, but not too bad. On the ninth morning after, I got out of bed and I fell over. I noticed that both Achilles tendons were incredibly painful. I was stiff all over my body. I had a pounding headache, and I am not prone to headaches. I don’t get migraines. I’ve maybe had them, you know, once or twice in my life before. And I had become very sensitive to light. It was quite bright.

[00:05:00]

I thought, well, this is strange. And I just spent a day or two sort of wandering around and really not thinking about it.

But then the symptoms started to get more and more acute. I couldn’t breathe; I was coughing. I didn’t have a GP at the time, so I contacted a walk-in clinic. But of course, there were no walk-in clinics at the time. Everything was by phone. I spoke to a doctor at this clinic, and he said, “Oh, it sounds like you’re having a reaction to the vaccine.” I thought, well, that actually makes sense because I do have pre-existing autoimmune problems that have been controlled. So he prescribed some gabapentin, and I picked it up at the pharmacist. I proceeded to take it and my conditions continued to worsen. I developed tremors in my arms. This is a bit personal, but my breasts became very swollen, and within a few days, I had begun a period. Now, I’m 60 years old, and I went through menopause early at the age of 47. So this was very, very strange.

Shawn Buckley

Sorry about being personal, but you actually went through a couple of menstrual cycles.

Patricia Leidl

I did.

Shawn Buckley

After not having one for twelve years.

Patricia Leidl

That’s correct. So the splitting headache. I also became almost insensate with pain throughout my body. And I ended up going to Victoria General Hospital. I was just beside myself. I thought I was having a—something serious was going on. My heart was racing, tachycardia. I had what eventually was diagnosed as postural orthostatic syndrome, POTS.

Anyhow, I went to Royal Jubilee, and they did a workup and they said that my blood was normal. The assisting physician told me that he believed it was in my head, even though my heart was actually racing. And if you looked at my tendons, which nobody bothered to do, they were very abnormal looking. So I went home. And the condition worsened.

Shawn Buckley

Can I just slow you down. Because I imagine when you were at the hospital and they’re dealing with the tachycardia at the time, but you would have been explaining all of the other symptoms that you had been experiencing, I expect. Am I right about that?

Patricia Leidl

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley

So like right down to, you’re 60 and you just had a menstrual cycle after 12 years of not having one, and you have an internist tell you that this is in your head?

Patricia Leidl

That’s right.

Shawn Buckley

How did that make you feel?

Patricia Leidl

I felt furious and at the same time, somewhat abject because you can’t really fight against physicians in an emergency context. They tend to punish you. They tend to withhold treatment.

Anyhow, they did go ahead with the blood test, but I was sent home with Tylenol. The symptoms continued and at the point where I really thought I was going to die. My heart felt like a squirrel in my chest cavity. I’d stand up, I’d almost faint. I couldn’t walk very far. Just previous to the second jab I had done a 26 km hike with no problem. I was very fit.

Shawn Buckley

I think I want to put this into context. My understanding is that your practice was to walk about 15 to 20 kilometres a day.

Patricia Leidl

Yes.

Shawn Buckley

And now you’re telling us you could hardly walk.

Patricia Leidl

I could hardly walk.

Shawn Buckley

And even today you can only walk a couple of blocks.

Patricia Leidl

Yes, without having difficulty breathing. I had developed a cough. I’d walk a block or two and have to sit down because the pain was so acute. I was given painkillers, Tramacet, which did nothing. So I started to forage for medical care. I didn’t have a GP. I visited friends in Whistler, and I went to urgent care there, hoping that I’d get some sort of answers. The admitting doctor there, I said to her, “I believe I have a vaccine injury.” And she said, “Well, you probably do, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t know anything about the virus. We don’t know what’s in the vaccine.”

[00:10:00]

And basically, you know, “Suck it up, buttercup, but go to St. Paul’s where they might be able to help you with the pain.”

So I drove down to St. Paul’s. And very hard to drive because my head was pounding and I had become very photo sensitive. I checked myself into St. Paul’s, and they sat me on a chair after doing a work-up, which again showed completely normal blood work. They put me on a dose of IV hydromorphone, which again did nothing. It did nothing to alleviate the pain.

In the meantime, I had swollen up. I inflated like a toad with edema. My hands were like sausages. My face was like a balloon. My skin was tight and scratchy. I was manifesting all of the indications of a severe allergic autoimmune reaction.

I left Vancouver, returned back to Canada, and started to experience severe gut pain, and again checked myself into a hospital. You’ll have to forgive me because I can’t remember all the times that I tried to go to emergency. However, every time was accompanied by an 8-12 hour wait. Finally, I saw one emergency room physician who diagnosed me with gastric reflux, which of course didn’t explain the swollen breasts, the period, the edema, the pain, the strange Achilles tendons. But he did ask me, he said, “Are you planning to get a booster?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “That’s good.” That was really the only indication I had from any physician that this might be real or something that they were going to acknowledge in any way, shape, or form.

Shawn Buckley

Now I just want to pull a few details out of you. So you’re talking about this edema. My understanding is, literally, you were not recognizable,

Patricia Leidl

I was not recognizable.

Shawn Buckley

as yourself. You’d gone from 120 pounds to 180 pounds.

Patricia Leidl

125 to 180.

Shawn Buckley

Right.

Patricia Leidl

I’m still very swollen.

Shawn Buckley

When you’re talking about light sensitivity, you’re literally talking about wearing sunglasses inside the house.

Patricia Leidl

I was wearing sunglasses inside the house even on overcast days.

Shawn Buckley

And it’s just because it was too painful to have that light.

Patricia Leidl

It was too painful.

Shawn Buckley

And you speak about pain, but my understanding, like literally, you’ve had constant pain.

Patricia Leidl

Constant pain. Unrelenting constant pain.

Shawn Buckley

Now I also understand that there’s been some mental effects. And I don’t mean emotional, but more like a brain fog thing. Can you talk about that?

Patricia Leidl

Yes, you read out the bare bones of my CV, but I’m a professional writer. I’ve worked for many of the top international organizations in the world. I’ve reached a pretty high level. I did a lot of work doing analysis and running campaigns and editing these huge, technical UN books that would come out every year: the State of World Population, the State of the World’s Vaccines [and Immunization], Test and Treat. I’ve considered myself fairly intellectually adroit.

However, since the vaccine, I have noticed that I cannot remember anything. I feel it’s very difficult to describe. I had not known what brain fog was, but I do now. It’s a sense of being neither here nor there, not being present in your body and not being present anywhere else. It’s sort of this strange kind of literal—littoral, I should say—between being and non-being. It’s like there’s a scrim around you at all times, and it’s very disconcerting. My memory has definitely suffered. I cannot find the words that I used to find. It’s ongoing.

And now, I’ve lost hearing in my right ear. That just happened two weeks ago. I haven’t gone into emergency because every time I go into emergency, I feel humiliated and degraded. Every time, with maybe one exception. And now my left ear is starting to go as well.

Shawn Buckley

And I understand that, actually, you’ve had some other symptoms related to ears,

[00:15:00]

like vertigo and nausea.

Patricia Leidl

Vertigo.

Shawn Buckley

Can you share with us about that?

Patricia Leidl

Yes, prior to this, I was an avid hiker, and now I can’t. I can go uphill, but I can’t go downhill without a stick because I’m not able to measure or gauge the distance between my feet and the ground. I’ve become very wobbly. I’ve given up my bike. If I go down, even a short incline, I need a stick.

Shawn Buckley

How is your energy level?

Patricia Leidl

Non-existent.

Shawn Buckley

Okay, so how do you generally feel?

Patricia Leidl

Terrible.

Shawn Buckley

Are you able to work?

Patricia Leidl

No.

Shawn Buckley

What’s your current prognosis? So has any doctor basically given you hope that, “Hey, you’ve got this, and we can treat it.”

Patricia Leidl

Yes, I’ve been quite persistent about trying to obtain some sort of care or some acknowledgement. I’ve consulted with CHANGEPain in Vancouver. I now have a GP in Cobble Hill, which is about an hour and 15 drive from where I live. I have seen an internist in Vancouver. I was very adamant that I had a vaccine injury, and he has reported back to me, just two days ago, he cc’d one of the doctors I’ve been dealing with. He maintains that I have long COVID. Except there’s only one problem with that, which is that I’ve never had COVID.

Shawn Buckley

I just want to stop. So in your mind, there’s no question this is caused by the vaccine. And I can just tell hearing your story, I can’t get my head around the menopause one. You’d not had a period for 12 years and then you have two. And here you’re telling us you haven’t even had COVID, but they’re trying to blame some of your troubles on what they’re calling long COVID.

Patricia Leidl

Yes, in the last three years almost everyone I know has had COVID, except for myself. I haven’t even had the sniffles. The symptoms started ten days after the second vax, so in temporal terms it makes sense that that would have been the causative agent. But this internist is insisting that I have long COVID and I have never had COVID.

Shawn Buckley

Now my understanding is that you wanted to put in a vaccine-injury claim. Can you tell us what’s happened with that?

Patricia Leidl

Well, it took a year for— I spoke to one of the walk-in clinic doctors who had been speaking on the phone with me. I personally put in a report to Pfizer, and then Pfizer, after several months, got back to the doctor who I had referred to. He very grumblingly put out a report back to Pfizer going into details. Then I asked for him to put in a report to Health Canada, and he refused. We had never met in person. He said it cost too much money, and it took too much time, and he just wasn’t going to do it. So I stopped seeing him.

Through a friend, I was able to find another doctor who was taking patients in Chemainus, or pardon me, Cobble Hill. We met, and he put in the report to Health Canada, and many, many months down the road, I received a call from the public health nurse asking me questions about my vaccine injury. Then a few weeks later, I received a call from Dr. Benusic who is the Island Health Officer. We chatted for a bit, and he said, “Well, you have to speak to a rheumatologist. We’re only really accepting vaccine claims that are written by rheumatologists.”

So I went to see a rheumatologist who confirmed that I had bilateral tendonitis, bilateral meaning it’s likely to be autoimmune. I had an ultrasound that showed bilateral tendonitis. But the lumps, the swellings, were in the wrong place for rheumatoid arthritis. So I asked her, “Well, what is it then?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And that was it. So there we were again. I’ve continued to work with CHANGEPain.

[00:20:00]

Then in October, I started to become so sick that again, I thought I was dying. At that point, I thought, well, maybe I’ll just die at home because there’s absolutely no point in going to the hospital to be humiliated again. Because it was just happening over and over again. As soon as I mentioned vaccine injury, they treated me like I was saying that “Mars had come down to Earth” or that it was just a preposterous notion that a vaccine could cause an injury. And because I’ve suffered from depression in my life, that was used to dismiss me—that this was all in my head—even though there were physical manifestations that something was wrong.

Shawn Buckley

Just before you go on—because you’ve said something really important here that I think we need to understand, and I might want you to explain in a little more detail. So you’re at a point around October where you’re actually worried you’re going to die, your condition is so poor. Have I got that right?

Patricia Leidl

Yes.

Shawn Buckley

But you actually made a decision: I’m not going to go to the hospital because my experience is I’m so mistreated, I’m not willing to do that. Which means that you were more willing to take the risk of just dying than facing humiliating treatment at the hospital. Is that basically what you’re telling us?

Patricia Leidl

Yes, I’d rather die at home than be humiliated at the hospital and probably die anyhow. Because it would have taken too much work to go to the hospital, I would have waited too long, and I would have been sent home with acetaminophen and another dose of contempt.

Shawn Buckley

And the humiliation is being told things like, “It’s in your head.”

Patricia Leidl

Yeah, and contempt.

Shawn Buckley

Can you tell us about the contempt?

Patricia Leidl

Well, there was just so much of it. I don’t know how much of it was because I was female. Because I do understand, based on a lot of research, that women tend to be treated differently when they enter emergency wards. But essentially, I was treated like I was a minor or that I was off my rocker or that I was being hysterical. This was at Royal Jubilee, in particular, that their MO was to try and get people out as quickly as possible without actually dealing with their symptoms.

I did get a CT scan. I did get an abdominal scan that, the next day, my GP, very kindly, phoned me up and he said, “You know, your gallbladder’s about to burst. They should have kept you in, and they didn’t.” So then I had to wait a couple of weeks to get my gallbladder removed. But I had hoped that with my gallbladder removed that some of these symptoms would subside, and they didn’t.

This just kept on going on. And like I said, it seems to be one thing or another. At one point I broke out in a rash from my knees to my neck, with full pustules. That was mysterious, didn’t know what caused that. There was never any positive test. It was just this thing. It eventually went away. And then just as I’m starting to feel marginally better, now I’m losing my hearing. And again, I haven’t had that looked at because I feel like it’s pointless. I will when I get home, but if you so much as mentioned vaccine injury, then you will be dismissed.

Shawn Buckley

Next month it will be two years

Patricia Leidl

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley

since you were injured and basically, you’re disabled: You can’t work. You’re suffering daily. You’ve gone from where you’ve walked 15 to 20 kilometres a day, where now you’re lucky to go a couple of blocks. Your life’s turned upside down. Has the medical system addressed even one of your issues in this two-year period?

Patricia Leidl

Well, I’ve been taking cortisone because I now have been diagnosed with Addison’s disease, which is very rare. I’ve also been diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, which is very rare. I’ve been put on cortisone. I have a disabled sticker for my vehicle. And that’s it.

Shawn Buckley

Right, so how does all of this make you feel—not physically but I mean emotionally—just having the experience you’ve had with the vaccine and the medical system?

Patricia Leidl

Pretty distraught.

[00:25:00]

I’m pretty distraught. Socially it’s been very difficult. I’ve been ostracized by people who I formerly counted as friends who’ve actually witnessed the change in me because it was quite dramatic. Not all of them by any means, but some of them, they’re just so invested in the narrative that anyone who expresses an alternative, even presentation of being, is somehow the enemy. And they don’t believe me. Now I’ve also met other people, who are total strangers, who’ve never met me in my unbroken state, and they’ve been a wonderful support. And coming to this Inquiry has been very useful, I’ve learned a lot.

Shawn Buckley

Thank you. Is there anything you want to add before I ask the commissioners if they have any questions?

Patricia Leidl

No, not really. Maybe after the questions I’d like to add one thing.

Shawn Buckley

Okay. So I’ll ask the commissioners if they have any questions. No, there are no questions from the commissioners.

Patricia Leidl

Okay. I just would like to read out one statement. Just for all of us.

We are witnessing the most well-planned, widespread case of medicide ever experienced in our human history. All levels of government, business, and so-called healthcare system have colluded to bully, gaslight, and coerce us into taking inoculations that they knew were unsafe. And then, when they caused harm, failed in their duty of care to first acknowledge, treat, and support those whose lives have been devastated from this poison. Who were our so-called authorities pandering to? Why did our respective governments unleash fear instead of reassurance? And finally, who are the puppet masters behind this global atrocity? In the words of Nelson Mandela, there can be no forgiveness without justice. And I would add, no reconciliation without redress. So thank you very much.

Shawn Buckley

Before you go, I just want to follow up on that because I think actually even just the fact that you felt that it was important to write out a statement and share that with us actually speaks about your journey. Do you understand what I’m suggesting? You’ve had such a terrible experience that it’s important for you to be asking these questions and telling us that we need to get answers and have some justice.

Patricia Leidl

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley

Yeah, so thank you for that.

Patricia Leidl

Thank you.

Shawn Buckley

Patricia before we go to the next witness, can you email me that paragraph? Do you mind if we make it a part of the record [Exhibit VA-10], that paragraph?

Okay. Thank you.

[00:28:23]

Final Review and Approval: Margaret Phillips, August 25, 2023.    

The evidence offered in this transcript is a true and faithful record of witness testimony given during the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) hearings. The transcript was prepared by members of a team of volunteers using an “intelligent verbatim” transcription method.   

For further information on the transcription process, method, and team, see the NCI website: https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/about-these-transcripts/

• International Communications Advisor/Director based in Western Canada.
• senior professional in a variety of United Nations Organizations including the United Nations Population Fund (New York) and the World Health Organization (Geneva) and various USAID-dunded projects

Summary

Patricia Leidl’s past employment was in high level positions with the UN and the WHO in the communications field and then on various US aid projects in Afghanistan and Yemen. In 2021, she was shortlisted for a contract job in Europe however, in order to fly, she needed to be double vaccinated. She also received a letter from the government telling her she needed to get vaccinated because she was deemed vulnerable and at higher risk because she had pre-existing auto-immune issues and high blood pressure. Consequently, Patricia made the decision to get vaccinated and received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine in April and June of 2021.

After the first shot she felt fine. Nine days after her second shot, Patricia started to suffer many adverse reactions and her symptoms became more acute in the days that followed. She sought help from doctors at several different medical clinics and hospital emergency wards over the months that followed, but with marginal success, and was often dismissed by some of these doctors when vaccine injury was suggested. Patricia’s physical state had become so depleted that at one point she thought she was going to die. Prior to getting the jabs she was in excellent physical condition typically walking 15 to 20 km a day. Currently, Patricia continues to experience constant pain, brain fog and has problems remembering things. She has also lost some of her hearing and experiences vertigo. She can no longer work. Because of poor treatment and humiliation by medical staff over the past two years, she is reluctant to pursue further care.