Here is what the CDC itself has to say about VAERS, Covid Burden, the number of confirmed vs. estimated cases, and the outlook for the future.

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A lot has been written about the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) lately.

Here is what the CDC itself says currently:

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

Updated Aug. 25, 2021

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Important Things To Know About VAERS

• VAERS is an early warning system used to monitor adverse events that happen after vaccination. VAERS is the frontline system of a comprehensive vaccine safety monitoring program in the United States. It is one of several systemspdf icon CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) use to help ensure vaccines used in the United States, including COVID-19 vaccines, are closely monitored for safety.
• VAERS gives vaccine safety experts valuable information so they can assess possible vaccine safety concerns, including the new COVID-19 vaccines. It is especially useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of health problems (also called "adverse events") that might indicate a possible safety problem with a vaccine.
• If a health problem is reported to VAERS, that doesn't mean that the vaccine caused the problem. It warns vaccine safety experts of potential problems that they may need to assess, and it alerts them to take further action, as needed.
• Hundreds of millions of people in the United States have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. The majority of reports to VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination have been non-serious adverse events. CDC provides timely updates on selected adverse events reported after COVID-19 vaccination.

How Reports Come into VAERS

VAERS collects reports of possible adverse events that happen after vaccination. Anyone can submit a report to VAERSexternal icon, including patients, parents or caregivers, healthcare providers, and vaccine manufacturers.

Under Emergency Use Authorization, FDA requires healthcare professionals to report to VAERS certain adverse events external icon that occur after COVID-19 vaccination. CDC also encourages reporting of any medically important adverse event even if it isn't clear if the vaccine caused the health problem. This helps public health officials monitor and follow-up on possible safety problems. Learn more about selected adverse events reported to VAERS.

How VAERS Reports Are Reviewed

Vaccine safety experts review all reports of serious adverse events submitted to VAERS. A serious adverse event after vaccination is something that causes

• Permanent disability
• Hospitalization or an extended hospital stay (if vaccinated while in the hospital)
• Life-threatening illness
• Birth defects (congenital anomalies)
• Death

When VAERS staff members follow-up on a report of a serious adverse event, they ask for the patient's medical records related to the event to learn more about what happened.

VAERS reports are available to the public, but to protect privacy and confidentiality they do not include information that could identify the person.

Drilling down some more of the links, CDC itself has this to say about VAERS strengths and limitations:

Strengths and Limitations of VAERS Data

When evaluating VAERS data, it is important to understand the strengths and limitations.

Strengths

• VAERS accepts reports from anyone. This also allows VAERS to act as an early warning system to detect rare adverse events.
• VAERS collects information about the vaccine, the person vaccinated, and the adverse event. Scientist obtain follow-up information on serious reports.
• All data (without identifying patient information) are publicly available.

Limitations

• VAERS is a passive reporting system, meaning that reports about adverse events are not automatically collected. Instead someone who had or is aware of an adverse event following vaccination must file a report.
• VAERS reports are submitted by anyone and sometimes lack details or contain errors.
• VAERS data alone cannot determine if the vaccine caused the reported adverse event.

  This specific limitation has caused confusion about the publicly available data, specifically regarding the number of reported deaths. In the past there have been instances where people misinterpreted reports of death following vaccination as death caused by the vaccines; that is a mistake.

  VAERS accepts all reports of adverse events following vaccination without judging whether the vaccine caused the adverse health event. Some reports to VAERS might represent true vaccine reactions, and others might be coincidental adverse health events not related to vaccination at all.

  Generally, a causal relationship cannot be established using information from VAERS reports alone.

• The number of reports submitted to VAERS may increase in response to media attention and increased public awareness.
• It is not possible to use VAERS data to calculate how often an adverse event occurs in a population.

It's hard to imagine a database more riddled with problems than VAERS, particularly now, due to the "media attention," as the CDC puts it in their next to last limitation. See especially their own bolded point: VAERS data alone cannot determine if the vaccine caused the reported adverse event.

On this page, the CDC examines what they admittedly call, selected adverse cases on VAERS, but they do draw some broad conclusions:

• Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it's unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. More than 543 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through February 3, 2022. During this time, VAERS received 12,122 preliminary reports of death (0.0022%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA clinicians review reports of death to VAERS including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records.
  
  A review of reports indicates a causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine and TTS. CDC scientists have conducted detailed reviews of TTS cases and made the information available to healthcare providers and the public:
  • US Case Reports of Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis With Thrombocytopenia After Ad26.COV2.S Vaccination, March 2 to April 21, 2021external icon
  • Case Series of Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome following COVID-19 vaccinationUnited States, December 2020-August 2021external icon
  • Updates on Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) pdf icon[1.3 MB, 39 Pages]

  Continued monitoring has identified nine deaths causally associated with J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccination. CDC and FDA continue to review reports of death following COVID-19 vaccination and update information as it becomes available.

The CDC no longer recommends the Janssen vaccine I got as the first choice, but it's still authorized. My personal experience is that it was like a 1/10th-the-force mini-Covid, which I had about 2 months prior to being eligible for and getting, the vaccine.

But the bottom line is this:

More than 543 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through February 3, 2022. During this time, VAERS received 12,122 preliminary reports of death (0.0022%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA clinicians review reports of death to VAERS including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records.

12,122 preliminary reports is not 20,000, as some VAERS critics have reported, and 0.0022% is far less than have died of Covid primarily. Almost everyone realizes virtually no Covid death is from Covid alone, but the same is true of the much smaller number of Covid vaccine deaths, almost entirely due to the same kinds of co-morbidities that can kill you if you contract Covid.

Some people say VAERS is under-reporting incidents, even though there's certainly more reporting of Covid reactions than of any other disease-related reactions, like, say, those from the flu vaccine (it's also a lot easier to search for on the CDC site, refuting the charges of a "cover-up" or hiding the data. The CDC actually makes the data quite available and seems to be making an effort to make it layman-accessible, though like the vast majority of people, I wasn't looking at VAERS data until this particular pandemic). But it's probable that Covid itself is under-reported. Some estimates say that the majority of Americans have already had Covid, in some cases more than once due to variant immunity being only partial from earlier infections.

The CDC says 146 million cases is the estimated total Covid Burden, which goes beyond the total confirmed cases of 77,595,284 cases by the CDC. But note this very important caveat: the confirmed cases go through Feb. 12 while the Covid Burden on the CDC site hasn't been updated since October 2, 2021, well before the latest huge spike in cases due to the Omicron variant, which is only just now ending (whether there will be another spike remains to be seen, but is probable). Taken with the Omicron surge, even larger than any previous peak in cases, though not in deaths since the Omicron is milder (but not mild for many people!), this means the majority of 335 million Americans have almost certainly had some form of Covid already. This natural and vaccinated immunity means the worst of the pandemic is probably over, especially when combined with the fact that the Omicron variant is probably close to the most contagious Covid can get, though there is even a sub-variant now which may be even more selectively evolved to infect people; Covid-19 has evolved rapidly and thoroughly to infect its now favored host, human beings.

Although some authorities are recommending a fourth booster already, and the latest findings indicate the mRNA vaccines can lose their effectiveness after just 4 months, few are saying people getting boosted annually, or bi- or even tri-annually, is a viable long-term solution.

First, because even small risks from the vaccine can be multiplied into significant risks when the vaccine is taken over and over, for years.

Second, because people are and will simply refuse to continue getting boosted. Already a majority of Americans are saying "we just have to learn to live with Covid." Fortunately, they have shifted to that opinion after treatments have improved and the virus has become less lethal. A bit more than half as many people are now being hospitalized with Covid as were hospitalized with Covid last summer, due to Omicron's far less severity.

Within just a few weeks we will pass 1 million deaths primarily from Covid-19. It's well past time for the mandates to be lifted so that the enormous damage to people's lives and livelihoods can begin to be addressed and hopefully repaired. That damage goes beyond the scope of this article, but is the longest-lasting of effects of Covid-19, none of which are close to over yet.

Authors Website: http://newthinking.blogspot.com/

Authors Bio:

Scott Baker is a Managing Editor & The Economics Editor at Opednews, and a former blogger for Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Global Economic Intersection.

His anthology of updated Opednews articles "America is Not Broke" was published by Tayen Lane Publishing (March, 2015) and may be found here:

http://www.americaisnotbroke.net/

Scott is a former and current President of Common Ground-NY (http://commongroundnyc.org/), a Geoist/Georgist activist group. He has written dozens of articles for Common Ground's national publication, GroundSwell, and has advocated for the Georgist Land Value Tax to public and political audiences.

A complete list of his publications can be found here:

Click Here

He is also New York State Coordinator,Senior Advisor, Director and AI Chair for the Public Banking Institute

Click Here, which seeks to promote Public Banking. The PBI is chaired by another OEN blogger, Ellen Brown.
Scott has appeared on TV/Radio and in in-person Presentations to explain the principles of Georgism, Greenbacking, and State Banking. These may also be found on his personal blog: http://newthinking.blogspot.com/

Scott has a dozen progressive petitions on Change.org which may be found here:

http://chn.ge/10nUAmJ

Scott was an I.T. Manager for a major New York university for over two decades where he earned a Certificate for Frontline Leadership.

He had a video game published in Compute! Magazine: Click Here

Scott is a graduate and adjunct faculty of the Henry George School of Social Science in New York City.

Scott is a modern-day Renaissance Man with interests in economics, science and all future-forward topics.

He has been called an "adept syncretist" by Kirkus Discoveries for his novel, NeitherWorld - a two-volume opus blending Native American myth, archaeological detail, government conspiracy, with a sci-fi flair http://amzn.to/10nUoDV

Scott grew up in New York City and Pennsylvania. He graduated with honors and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University and was a member of the Psychology honor society PSI CHI.

Today he is an avid bicyclist and ride co-leader in a prominent bike advocacy organization.

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