After is not the same as because of
At Natural News on September 15, 2021 there is an article by Lance D. Johnson titled Approximately 70 people die from COVID vaccines every day in America – VAERS data. Is that claim true? No! Natural News is an unreliable source of anti-vaccine information, as was discussed by Melissa Goldin, John Gregory, and Kendrick McDonald at Newsweek on May 25, 2021 in an article titled How a well-meaning U.S. government database fuels dangerous vaccine misinformation. The VAERS web page titled Guide to Interpreting VAERS Data explains that:
“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.”
And another article by David L. Katz at LinkedIn Pulse on July 13, 2021 titled COVID and Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting: How VAERS veers off course adds:
“Even if a vaccine actually caused not a single death, VAERS would be loaded up with reports of death that occurred following vaccination, from a variety of causes. VAERS is designed to be inclusive, not exclusive; to be sensitive, not specific. VAERS is designed to welcome false positives, to avoid the dangers of false negatives. VAERS is highly prone to mix together actual ‘cause and effect’ with ‘true, true, and entirely unrelated.’ These are, simply, facts of the system, there by design.”
How many people die every day? A fact check article by Bill McCarthy at Politifact on May 6, 2021 titled Tucker Carlson’s misleading claim about deaths after COVID-19 vaccine says 8,000 people die from all causes.
Questionable reports in VAERS
The least credible report in VAERS was discussed by James R. Laidler in an archived article from his neurodiversity weblog back on July 27, 2006 titled Chelation & Autism which stated:
“The chief problem with VAERS data is that reports can be entered by anyone and are not routinely verified. To demonstrate this a few years ago I entered a report that an influenza vaccine had turned me into The Hulk. The report was accepted and entered into the database. Because the reported adverse event was so … unusual, a representative of VAERS contacted me. After a discussion of the VAERS database and its limitations, they asked my permission to delete the record, which I granted. If I had not agreed, the record would still be there still, showing that any claim can become part of the database, no matter how outrageous or improbable.”
An article by Jonathan Jarry at the McGill Office for Science and Society on June 18, 2021 titled Don’t Fall for the ‘VAERS Scare’ Tactic mentions other questionable reports:
“To show that VAERS listings should not be taken at face value to mean that the vaccine caused the reported event, I trawled through the database’s reports on the COVID-19 vaccines. There were many, many reports of fever and injection site reactions (to be expected), but there were also, shall we say, head-scratching reports. A woman reported a large bald spot on top of her head following vaccination. Someone simply wrote in, ‘Nosebleed.’ I saw a report of ‘anal leakage.’ More than one person complained of suddenly becoming impotent. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, the funniest report I saw stated, ‘My penis swelled to ten times its size.’ ”
How do the numbers of adverse events compare with the number of people vaccinated?
Some people proclaim that thousands or hundreds of thousands of adverse events have occurred. But those apparently large numbers need to be considered as a ratio (or percent) by dividing by the number of people which were vaccinated – hundreds of millions. We can look at an example from Idaho. An article by Bob “Nugie” Neugebauer at the Gem State Patriot News on July 17, 2021 titled Vaccination or termination reported that there were 438,441 total adverse events with 41,015 serious injuries and 9048 deaths. At that time there had been 156,982,549 people fully vaccinated.
The table shown above gives the fraction of events compared with the number vaccinated, and multiplies by 100 to give the percentage. It also shows the reciprocal of the fraction, the odds of each event. The usual yardstick for a rare event is being struck by lightning. According to the National Weather Service the lifetime fraction is 0.00006356, which is bigger than the 0.0000576 for death after a COVID vaccination. The 41,015 serious injuries is a fraction of only 0.000261, or odds of 1 in 3,827. Yet Neubauer’s second paragraph instead had claimed:
“This is going to become a huge problem for employers who force their employees to take the shot as they may wind up assuming some if not all of the liability for any injuries that occur to their employees who required to take the shot. IACI’s president Alex LeBeau says that any incidents occurring from the vaccine should be covered by workmen’s compensation. You can bet that the courts are going to be full of cases where employers are going to be sued by employees for injuries caused by this covid medical device.”
Are there other databases better than VAERS?
Yes, of course there are. An article by Jonathan Howard at Science-Based Medicine on September 16, 2021 titled More thoughts on the VAERS pre-print mentions the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD):
“The VSD is an active monitoring system that is directly linked to patients’ medical records. As such, it is not subject to the same limitations as VAERS, a passive monitoring system that contains unverified and possibly duplicate cases.”
The cartoon of a scared man was modified from this one at Wikimedia Commons.
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