VAERS Database Reports 623,343 Adverse Side Effects From Vaccine

When reviewing data from VAERS, please keep in mind the following limitations I can be 10 to 100 times underreported. 

VAERS is a passive reporting system, meaning that reports about adverse events are not automatically collected, but require a report to be filed to VAERS. VAERS reports can be submitted voluntarily by anyone, including healthcare providers, patients, or family members. Reports vary in quality and completeness. They often lack details and sometimes can have information that contains errors.

"Underreporting" is one of the main limitations of passive surveillance systems, including VAERS. The term, underreporting refers to the fact that VAERS receives reports for only a small fraction of actual adverse events. The degree of underreporting varies widely. As an example, a great many of the millions of vaccinations administered each year by injection cause soreness, but relatively few of these episodes lead to a VAERS report. Physicians and patients understand that minor side effects of vaccinations often include this kind of discomfort, as well as low fevers. On the other hand, more serious and unexpected medical events are probably more likely to be reported than minor ones, especially when they occur soon after vaccination, even if they may be coincidental and related to other causes.

A report to VAERS generally does not prove that the identified vaccine(s) caused the adverse event described. It only confirms that the reported event occurred sometime after vaccine was given. No proof that the event was caused by the vaccine is required in order for VAERS to accept the report. VAERS accepts all reports without judging whether the event was caused by the vaccine.

Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that between Dec. 14, 2020 and Aug. 20, 2021, a total of 623,343 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 13,627 deaths — an increase of 559 over the data released last week.

There were 84,466 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 3,416 compared with the previous week.

Excluding “foreign reports” filed in VAERS, 488,318 adverse events, including 6,128 deaths and 38,765 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020 and Aug. 20, 2021.between Dec. 14, 2020 and Aug. 20, 2021.

Of the 6,128 U.S. deaths reported as of Aug. 20, 13% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 18% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 32% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

In the U.S., 360.3 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Aug. 20. This includes: 203 million doses of Pfizer, 143 million doses of Moderna and 14 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

The data come directly from reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date, usually about a week prior to the release date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.

As COVID surges among fully vaccinated, CDC fails to properly track breakthrough cases

As The Defender reported Aug. 24, the most recent data from the CDC shows 9,716 breakthrough cases resulting in hospitalization or death as of Aug. 16. However, the agency states those numbers are underreported.

On May 1, the CDC made a decision to stop tracking all breakthrough cases and instead only track cases in the fully vaccinated that resulted in hospitalization or death. That leaves public health officials without the full data that can answer questions as the new Delta variant spreads.

In an interview with PBS News Hour, Jessica Malaty Rivera, an infectious disease epidemiologist and research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital and former science communications lead at the COVID Tracking Project, said not tracking breakthrough data with as much granularity as we would hope is “basically creating blind spots in our understanding of the true impact of the virus, especially the variants that are circulating so widely in the United States.”

The New York Times recently published data from seven states — California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Utah, Vermont  and Virginia — that keeps particularly detailed records on breakthrough cases.

Analysis showed that in six of the states, breakthrough infections made up 18% to 28% of all newly diagnosed cases of COVID in the past several weeks, and 12% to 24% of all COVID-related hospitalizations, with reported deaths higher than the CDC’s original estimate of .5%.

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