Super Bowl Champ and Green Bay Packers Hall of Famer, Ken Ruettgers, discusses censorship and trying to improve America's medical system in this episode.
Ken Ruettgers was born in Bakersfield, CA and attended Garces Memorial High School before heading to the University of Southern California (USC) on an athletic scholarship. Ken was a first-round draft choice (seven overall) of the Green Bay Packers and culminated a 12-year career with a Super Bowl season in 1996 (Super Bowl XXXI). Ruettgers and his family moved to Oregon when he took a job with Multnomah Publishers as editorial director. In 2000, he left publishing and started a none-profit, GamesOver.org, to assist athletes with the challenges of sport career transition. Ken currently is a tenured professor and teaches sociology at Central Oregon Community College and is the department chair for Social Sciences. Ken earned his undergraduate in business as well as an MBA. He holds a PhD in sociology from Oxford Graduate School. Ruettgers was inducted into the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame in 2013. He is the author of “Homefield Advantage: A Dad’s Guide to the Power of Role Modeling”. Ken is married to Sheryl and they have three adult children.
We have the football great Ken Rutgers, Green Bay Packers, Hall of Fame, Super Bowl champion, and now medical fairness advocate.
Welcome to the show, Ken.
Well, thanks.
It's great to be here with you, Robert.
It's been quite a journey.
You're new to this phase, but you've been really courageous in talking about it.
So tell us what happened to you.
Well, I don't even see it as courageous.
I just see it as speaking out on behalf of, really advocating for my wife.
So my wife took the first Moderna shot in January.
She was, she's working on her master's in counseling.
So she was, you know, at the top of the list for the rollout and immediately started within 48 hours, swollen lymph nodes, and eventually progressed to a numbness and tingling on her face, her scalp, down the Her arms into her hands, on her legs.
And in fact, she just had a doctor's appointment yesterday with her neurologist.
And it is since her first appointment back in late January, early February.
Over the last six months, it's gotten progressively worse, her tingling and numbness.
So she joined a group early on and is unable to find answers.
So we've both done a lot of research, and that's the beginning of our journey.
What day did she get the vaccine?
She got it January 14th.
So it's interesting you ask that because I've done a lot of interviews and talked to a lot of people in the different groups that have found each other, many of them on Facebook.
Some of them have recently been, private groups have been canceled by Facebook.
But it's interesting that you ask because, and I'm sure you probably hear this with your long word, because people know these, the people that are, they know the exact date, which is so interesting to me.
Did you guys at night?
No.
No, no.
Currently, I teach at a college, but we were doing all the Zoom teaching for the last year and a half, and so I was way down on the list.
Quite vaccine-hesitant now, at least.
Were you vaccine hesitant at the time?
If the vaccine had been available, would you have taken it?
I don't think so, because I don't feel like I had enough information.
I think, for me personally, I'm looking at COVID and the information provided there.
I don't know how accurate it is.
Looking at the vaccine information, definitely not a lot of information there, hardly any that would satisfy me.
And so it's like, do I roll the dice with COVID?
Do I roll the dice with the vaccine?
I can't even make an informed decision.
So definitely from the beginning, I'm like, I don't know about this stuff.
And my wife was hesitant too.
But in early January, you know, what was being said, what was being promoted, safe and effective, lots of social pressure, lots of the social construction of reality for what it meant and what the vaccine was.
And I think the other thing that bothered me at the time that we talked about was...
That it was an experimental...
And it was this new...
Not even a vaccine.
They had to redefine the definition for vaccine to slide it in there.
And there's just too many red flags on this thing.
Have you been a guy who has always taken care of your health and, you know, interested in kind of functional...
Medicine or nutrition and those kind of things, I think you would have maybe a skepticism about new vaccine technology.
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, as a pro athlete, I mean, nutrition, the body, trying to, you know, research, health, obviously traditional medicine, orthopedic mostly, playing football.
But yeah, with this new technology, especially the speed at which it was rolled out, I was, it's concerning.
Yeah.
Where do you live now, Ken?
I live in Oregon, in Central Oregon in Bend.
I grew up in Bakersfield, California, went to USC, and then played 12 years with the Packers.
And so we were in Green Bay.
I was 35 years old.
I'd written a book to encourage dads to be role models for their own kids my last couple years in the NFL. And the publishing company was in And that's how you knew John Stockton was going to write you and I did that in the basketball grade.
Yeah, so I just got to know John and talk with him just recently through this process.
And it's interesting because what took me out of publishing and put me into a different space was advocating for sport career transition.
And this is the small world.
So John Stockton's brother-in-law, I played next to him for a few years in Green Bay.
He ended up in a SWAT standoff and was shot.
He was unarmed, shot eight times and died.
And a lot of us chalked it up as we talked, guys that played together, chalked it up to challenge identity, status, challenges with transition.
And so I left publishing and did full-time work in that sport career transition space.
And of course, now the NFL in 2015, they kind of took that on.
And so that's when I got my doctorate in sociology, is to do a dissertation on sport career transition.
But that was Stockton's brother-in-law.
Then we connected recently through Senator Johnson, who has been an amazing advocate for my wife and people in her group and in her circumstances that are suffering from these severe reactions to the vaccine.
You know, we're getting deluged by calls.
In fact, I took two this morning from NFL players who don't want to take the vaccine or are trying to figure it out because the NFL is very, very tough on them.
Yeah, so currently now it's due to change, right?
Because training camp's coming up and the NFL realizes they're having, you know, a lot of high vaccine hesitancy.
They're at about 30 or 40% vaccinated rate.
And what they're saying, at least what they're saying kind of You know, under the, you know, kind of quietly, but they're saying to the players, is if you, when you come to training camp, if you haven't been vaccinated, then be prepared to travel on different flights, be in different hotels, eat at different, you know, in a different setting, and zoom in to meetings and film sessions.
Well, I think back to, you know, I think back and go, well...
How are you going to make a team?
So there's a lot of pressure that's being put on these young men to get vaccinated and not that much different than what we're seeing outside of sports either.
Now, we have one who's a very well-known quarterback who is trying to figure out how to do it because they're also going to make them wear masks, like during practice and during games.
And then we have another one who's a coach who does not want to get vaccinated, really, really is against it and really is trying to debate because he's being told.
He's not being given a choice.
He's being told, you've got to get vaccinated or you're out.
And so I think they're even tougher on the coaches than they are on the players.
I would guess so, yeah.
That's a dilemma.
So you got censored.
I must have pissed you off.
Well, my wife's group did.
Now, when she found this group, and it was really, the irony is just dripping these days, right?
So my wife, for lack of any medical diagnosis or certainty from many doctors and a couple of different neurologists that she saw within the first couple of weeks...
She started doing her own research.
And this is a very common story that I'm finding as I talk to people in her group, I should say groups, that she started doing her own research.
And she found an article in Neurology Today that was online.
And the irony is that Fauci was in the article saying, quoted as saying, this is a safe and effective shot.
And she's sitting there going, what the heck?
It's not in my opinion or experience.
And she found a medical doctor that had commented below the article.
It was online.
And doctor had left her email address.
So my wife contacted her.
And then they started this small private Facebook group, mostly nurses and doctors that were early takers of the vaccine, right?
And of the shot.
And they were trying to figure it out.
They individually had contacted the FDA, the CDC, their politicians looking for help, looking for answers because the doctors in the medical community, this is new technology.
So they weren't told how the medical community has not been told how to deal with it, what it is, how to, you know, it doesn't fit our medical model, at least currently, because the CDC and the people up above and the medical are not communicating any of this.
And so eventually in May, they got together, again, mostly doctors, and they wrote a letter.
And it was a well, well-written letter, kind of asking for help and to be heard and to be seen and to be helped.
And they sent it to Janet Woodcock at the FDA and Rochelle Walensky at the CDC and sent it to the White House.
And nothing happened.
No response.
And that was in May, toward the end of May.
And of course, I mean, privately, I'm thinking to myself, it's a squeaky...
You're trying to be a squeaky wheel, but this is bigger than a bike.
This machine that's running down the...
This thing squeaks all the time.
You guys are going to have to threaten to steal the bike, not just squeak.
And so I said, well, let's start a website.
So I started a website.
My brother and I started a website for them, a space where they could share their stories.
And there's well over 100 stories of people that have written in to share their stories on this site so they could feel like they're being heard, like they had a voice because their voice wasn't being heard.
And then I started doing interviews so that they could have a video voice and somebody to ask them like a dialogue.
I'm sure when you talk to people, there's a lot of there's a lot of healing power in that.
And also getting the word out for those that are also traveling this desert in this space and was doing some editing and uploading this 12 year old who was in the youth trial in January, who was in a wheelchair, paralysis from the waist down, a feeding who was in a wheelchair, paralysis from the waist down, a feeding tube And you do that editing and you're going over the same stuff.
And I mean, I'm heartbroken.
And I'm tearing up just uploading this, and I'm thinking, what is going on with...
I know I'm a little late to the game.
I get that.
I mean, you've been doing this for a long time, and so I thought, man, what a piece of low-hanging fruit for a politician to jump on this and be a hero, to advocate for these people, to do what representatives in Washington should do.
Yeah.
And I thought, who could I call?
And, you know, Ron Johnson's name came to mind.
And I remember some sound bites.
He seemed to me like a good man, like a decent human being.
And he was from Wisconsin.
And so I have that Wisconsin connection to my NFL days.
So I called his office and we started talking that night.
That was before they threw you off, right?
Yeah, I was.
Yeah.
They were allowing most of those before that.
Yeah.
So he said, well, why are you interested in this?
I said, well, my wife.
And of course, I was so overwhelmed that he would even respond.
I mean, I was teared up just because there was somebody that cared to hear the voices of my wife and the people in her group.
So he said, well, how about, that was a Thursday.
he said, how about on Sunday, we get on Zoom and, you know, have her group of people tell me their stories.
And so on a Sunday evening for two hours, he listened, took notes to more than a half a dozen people tell their stories, just simply their stories.
This is how I was before the shot, healthy, active.
Then I took the shot on this date and this is what happened after the shot.
And you start to see a pattern right now as a sociologist, I'm like going, yeah, hello, there's a pattern here.
It's pretty obvious.
And, you know, it's like observe pattern.
And then you start asking why.
And that's kind of where the FDA and the CDC has stopped, at least for now.
So then he said, well, would you guys be willing to have your voices heard in Wisconsin at a press conference?
And they said yes.
And so we went and did that.
Now, it was after that press conference in Milwaukee on June 28th.
Within a week, one of the private Facebook accounts that my wife was on, 300 people, got canceled.
And we're talking, this is their lifeline.
The doctors aren't willing to say, or most, not all, but most, they can't give a diagnosis because it doesn't fit in our current medical model, right?
So they're looking for answers.
They're looking for diagnosis.
They want to be healthy.
And all they have is each other on this private group, right?
And they get canceled.
Another group, a week later, of 10,000 got canceled.
Since I put up the website, which we put up a contact portal, and so I've been answering the emails that come in, and I see the same patterns.
I was healthy before.
I took the shot.
My life is turned upside down for either lung, neurological, heart issues, and I can't find any answers.
I can't find any help.
Help me.
The best we can do is, you know, try to get the word out and get the CDC and the FDA and get recognition to study what's going on.
Talk a little bit about your relationship with people who are your friends, and are they now writing you off as a nut?
A few are, yeah.
I mean, they're pretty like, well, I don't know.
You know, they're a little standoffish, right?
Now, you know, some of them are, they're concerned about my wife, right?
But as I, you know, you start talking into that space, and it's like taboo.
It's like, I'm like this deviant outlier, weird guy.
But that's not our social construction of reality in this country right now.
And our government officials, our media, I mean, all these people have also reached out to the media.
And, you know, even I reached out to a local, to a regional radio guy.
I thought, oh, this guy, talk about low-hanging fruit, put the whole, hey, you know, this is Ken Rutgers, Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame, Super Bowl champion, my wife, da-da-da.
And Cheryl had, my wife Cheryl had, the day before, send an email, no response.
I get a response in 15 minutes.
And so they're like, yeah, well, we'd love to talk to your wife.
And, you know, and then anytime in the future, if we have football, I said, great, I have no problem with that.
Yeah, here's her contact information.
Great, we'll get ahold of her.
Two days later, still nothing.
Three days later, nothing.
So I sent another email.
No response.
No response.
So, fear of the cancel culture, which, you know, I mean, I talked to some of my colleagues, and they kind of laugh at this idea that there's this cancel culture even going on.
It's just, we're in the twilight zone, as you probably know, Robert.
Yeah, you know, how about the doctors?
Because a lot of people are running into this really weird hostility from doctors.
If you even say, I think there's a vaccine injury, you get the doctor who gets it.
No, it couldn't be.
You know, it's psychological.
It's a very, very strange thing from people who are in a profession that's supposed to be about listening about.
You know, medicine is about listening to people.
It's not about imposing state diktops on people.
It's about listening and healing.
And it's almost as if people in that profession, so many of them have lost sight of that, and they believe that it's their job to silence dissent and to enforce state policies.
Yeah.
So in my dozens of interviews that I've done, I'm seeing, again, these patterns.
And the typical pattern is I get the shot.
I have the reactions.
I go to the doctor.
Like my wife, oh, we're going to rule out these things because that's what we do in our medicine.
We're going to rule out MS. We're going to rule out Parkinson's.
So my wife got an MRI on her brain.
She She got an MRI on her spine.
She did blood work.
She did one of those tilt tests for POTS. She did a skin biopsy.
Very typical, what I'm hearing on the ground with dozens and dozens of people is these tests come back negative without any signs of what they're looking for.
So I see these symptoms.
I think it's this.
I test for this, and it's not.
And so instead of saying, well, maybe it's the vaccine, or I would be saying, it's probably the vaccine, and we need to study what it is about this gene therapy that's causing these, that's releasing these protein spikes in the system, and these, I mean, I'm not a medical doctor.
I'm a social scientist, but I'm not a medical doctor, so I'm This is what I'm hearing.
And I have had also nurses and PAs that I've talked to.
And what's going on there?
I talked to a PA who was a PA in a hospital.
And what they're seeing, as an example, the rural county that this PA's hospital was in was about 40% vaccinated.
And the patients in the hospital that were suffering from mostly heart and lung, but also some stroke-like symptoms, 80% of them, according to this PA, 80% of them had taken the vaccine, the shot.
Now, there's a correlative.
I mean, those kind of, all the VAERS, what we're seeing in VAERS, all these things should send up red flags to the people at the top in the medical community, and yet...
They're not.
And so they had a Facebook group of about 900 nurses and PAs between two hospitals that were communicating, trying to figure out how can we help these people?
How can we help our patients?
And the other conversation that was going on is, what's going to happen if this thing becomes a mandatory requirement for employment?
Facebook shut that group down to 900 people.
These are people that are trying to help sick people.
Again, tell our listeners how people can support you.
Well, I mean, we're trying to figure out how we can support people.
I mean, we're trying to be advocates to get your voice out, right?
So if you want to post your story, come on the website and there's a place you can post your story.
I mean, I wish we had...
The magic pill.
What we're trying to do is work as hard as we can to get as many voices out in the public space and get recognized, right?
And the big battle cry, and mostly women for the neurological.
I mean, it's really interesting.
We're doing good.
We know our space and we're very niched and mostly it's people that are still sick that are doing the work here, which is fine because we're trying to tell people in the many, many different groups.
And of course, when a book group gets canceled, they find other areas, they join other groups, they migrate over to WeMe or some other social media group.
So we're just trying to help.
But one of the things I've told That I'm telling the people in the group and that's starting to, is like, join these other groups.
Join Children's Health Defense.
Get involved with the people that have been doing this for a long time, that are organized, that have this long-term perspective and this goal to help people.
We're just trying to be a portal for people to get their stories out for their own healing, but also to get it out so that they get recognition and hopefully it'll change what's going on and they'll be heard and helped.
Tell us what your website is.
Yeah, it's C as in COVID, C19vax, V-A-X, reactions with an S dot com.
And the reason that I put that up as a website instead of a Facebook is it's a lot harder, at least still today, it's a lot harder to cancel, you know, website domains.
So it was kind of an easy decision to help them get the word out without the threat of being canceled by a social media giant.
Ken Rutgers, thank you very much for your courage, for your concern, and for your commitment to people who are injured and to democracy.
Well, you're welcome.
And I can't thank you enough for what you and the rest of the folks at Children's Health Defense, I mean, thank you for being such an advocate for children.
