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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3318 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 17, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I understand what you are saying, although I don't think it's completely true: the VAERS form asks you to report a vaccine-related adverse event, not simply that someone died post-vaccination. Also, old people were regularly given at least flu vaccines prior to COVID, so the effect you describe of old people coincidentally dying after vaccine administration was at least partially present before COVID, so I don't think that this is a sufficient explanation for the massive increase.

The current form specifically says "Please report all significant adverse events that occur after vaccination of adults and children, even if you are not sure whether the vaccine caused the adverse event." Healthcare providers are only "required by law to report to VAERS:

  • Any adverse event listed in the VAERS Table of Reportable Events Following Vaccination that occurs within the specified time period after vaccinations
  • An adverse event listed by the vaccine manufacturer as a contraindication to further doses of the vaccine"

(where that Table is basically "things we have a causal mechanism for, if seen within typically one week"), but are still "strongly encouraged to report to VAERS:

  • Any adverse event that occurs after the administration of a vaccine licensed in the United States, whether it is or is not clear that a vaccine caused the adverse event"

Also, old people were regularly given at least flu vaccines prior to COVID, so the effect you describe of old people coincidentally dying after vaccine administration was at least partially present before COVID, so I don't think that this is a sufficient explanation for the massive increase.

That's a very good point ... but the implicit assumption here is that healthcare providers were, for that vaccine, using VAERS that way. That's easy enough to check to back-of-napkin accuracy levels: in the US we administer flu shots to about 50% of the population each year, and we have around 60K deaths per week. Are we seeing the 30K "died within a week after a flu shot" base rate? Not only are we not within napkin-margin of that, we're a couple orders of magnitude too low. We're too low for the discrepancy to even be just "let's not give a flu shot to someone circling the drain" selection bias, which makes me suspect the alternative hypothesis: "nobody even thinks to blame the flu shot". But replace the flu shot with a brand-new politically-charged vaccine and it would be reasonable for the reporting rate to jump from negligible up to 30% - that'd be the responsible thing to do, even if you don't have any real suspicions, just to make it easier for researchers to possibly tease any signal out of the noise later.

the VAERS form asks you to report a vaccine-related adverse event, not simply that someone died post-vaccination.

There is no plausible way for an individual to distinguish between these two.

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