Government Investigation Examines Potential Link Between COVID Shots and Troop Deaths

Army Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long said in a Virginia federal court that she is reviewing 55,000 troop adverse-event reports and 2,544 troop death reports to determine if any were linked to COVID-19 shots.¹ Dr. Long, a board-certified aerospace medicine physician and flight surgeon who holds a master’s degree in public health, said in an Aug. 14, 2026 deposition that she was appointed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Health and Human Service Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s senior medical military advisor.

Long said she is working with Secretary Kennedy and Secretary Hegseth to investigate whether the 2,544 deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) were caused by what Kennedy. called “the most deadly vaccines in history.” Long said she plans to complete the work “within a year.”²

Long also testified that she knew of 28 people who died due to the COVID shot but she was “not allowed to share more.” She also explained that she is tasked with investigating “the health surveillance system during the pandemic” and two military medical databases; one of which showed a sharp increase in poor health conditions among servicemembers in 2021, the year mRNA COVID shots were first authorized under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) and widely administered.³

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) attributed the spike in medical diagnoses of poor health among men and women serving in the military to problems with collecting and analyzing the underlying data, although accounts of the specific cause for increases in cases of poor health varied. “Fact Check” reporting by Reuters said figures from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) were incorrect and that the “sharp increases were caused by underreporting for the years 2016-2020.” A spokesperson for the DoD told Reuters that “data corruption” contributed to the underreporting.”⁴

Long disputed the DoD’s explanation: “And what they did is they elevated all these numbers to… a level that it made it look like the vaccine had, like, cured everything and was beneficial,” Long said, according to a transcript of her testimony.⁵

Nearly 9,000 Troops Discharged Between 2021-2023 for Refusing COVID-19 Shots

The DoD discharged nearly 9,000 military personnel between 2021 and 2023 for refusing to comply with the Pentagon’s COVID shot mandate. The mandate required all service members to be “fully” vaccinated, meaning they had to receive both doses of a two-dose regimen of the mRNA biological (Pfizer or Moderna) or a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID viral vector vaccine,⁶ which was discontinued in 2023 following reports of a “rare but serious” risk of blood clots.⁷ Few medical or religious exemption requests were approved, and service members who declined COVID shots without an authorized exemption faced disciplinary and administrative consequences that ultimately resulted in discharge, along with the loss of pay and certain benefits.⁸

Although receiving multiple vaccines has long been a routine requirement for those serving in military, some service members objected specifically to COVID shots, initially citing fast-tracked accelerated development with limited pre-approval testing, first-time availability of the product under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), and lack of long-term safety data.⁹

Congress ended the COVID shot mandate in a 2022 law and, in 2025, an executive order by President Trump allowed discharged service members to be reinstated with full back pay and benefits.¹⁰

Kennedy maintains that requiring service members to receive COVID shots violates their rights. “These soldiers being sent over to fight for our freedoms should have some freedom, too,” he said in an April 2026 Senate hearing.^{11 12}

In May 2026, Hegseth established a COVID-19 Reinstatement and Reconciliation Task Force to coordinate the return of former service members adversely impacted by the COVID shot mandate. According to the Pentagon, nearly 170 service members had been reinstated or re-accessed as of April 2026, with more than 800 others expressing interest in returning to service. “The Department continues to right the wrongs of the past and to restore confidence in, and honor to, our fighting force,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said.¹³

Peer-Reviewed Autopsy Review Finds COVID Shots Caused or Contributed to 73.9 Percent of Deaths Examined

In 2024, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded a review of the medical literature and evidence demonstrating COVID shot safety, a review that was commissioned by the federal government following claims of injuries and deaths from COVID shots. The 2024 published report concluded that the available peer reviewed medical literature and other evidence related to the COVID shot’s safety was limited and inadequate to either accept or reject a causal relationship between COVID vaccination and sudden death.¹⁴

A separate 2024 peer-reviewed systematic review of published autopsy findings, however, reached a substantially different conclusion. The study, published in Science, Public Health Policy and the Law, examined 325 autopsy cases and one organ-restricted autopsy case following receipt of COVID shots . Three physicians independently reviewed the cases, with at least two of the three physicians determining in 240 cases, or 73.9 percent, that COVID shots directly caused or significantly contributed to death. All three physicians independently agreed that COVID shots contributed to death in 203 cases, or 62.5 percent. The researchers concluded that their findings suggested a “high likelihood of a causal link between COVID-19 vaccines and death,” while calling for further investigation to clarify their findings.¹⁵

Cardiologist Peter McCullough, MD, MPH, a co-author of the systematic review, commented on an earlier version of the findings in 2023: “As government and public health officials squirm with more published deaths coming out on a daily basis, the final retort of “you cannot prove the vaccine caused the death” has just been blown out of the water!”¹⁶

AMA Breaks with CDC Vaccine Guidance, Urging Vaccination as Uptake Continues to Decline

In the meantime, major medical groups, including the American Medical Association (AMA), continue to break with updated vaccine recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even as COVID shot uptake has declined to under 20 percent and doctors are urging all American adults to get more COVID shots, along with influenza and RSV shots.

Outstanding questions about the risks of COVID shot challenges the certainty of unequivocal, one-size-fits-all vaccine recommendations that, in too many cases, may result in injury or death for those who follow them.

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