New BMJ Report Uncovers Concerning Facts About VAERS: Where Are We With Vaccine Injury Reporting Systems?
A British Medical Journal (BMJ) investigation has raised concerns that the VAERS system isn’t operating as intended and that signals are being missed. A few shocking examples are given.
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The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is co-managed by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
It’s supposed to be a system where people, healthcare workers and physicians of all kind can report what they believe to be an injury resulting from a vaccine.
VAERS claims that serious reports result in the requisition of medical records and at minimum a “manual review.” Deaths, on the other hand, and other “adverse events of special interest” may go through an “in-depth” clinical review by CDC staff.
But what does all of this mean? What are the details? Does this even happen when it should? How do we know if it’s actually happening and proper investigations have occurred?
A recent British Medical Journal (BMJ) investigation, shared by BMJ investigations reporter Jennifer Block, has uncovered that VAERS has not been able to keep up with the pace of the “unprecedented number of reports since the rollout of covid vaccines.” Reports from covid vaccines make up the majority of reports compared to all vaccines and all other years combined.
The truth is that, as the BMJ explains, “the system is overwhelmed, reports aren’t being followed up, and signals are being missed.”
The BMJ has learnt that in the face of an unprecedented 1.7 million reports since the rollout of covid vaccines, VAERS’s staffing was likely not commensurate with the demands of reviewing the serious reports submitted, including reports of death. While other countries have acknowledged deaths that were “likely” or “probably” related to mRNA vaccination, the CDC—which says that it has reviewed nearly 20 000 preliminary reports of death using VAERS (far more than other countries)—has not acknowledged a single death linked to mRNA vaccines.
Before the pandemic VAERS was receiving nearly 60 000 adverse event reports each year. A 2015 CDC article suggests that the agency had the capacity to request records for just a few thousand serious reports each year. But in 2021 the total number of reports shot up to a million, and another 660 000 have been filed since. Nearly one in five meet the criteria of serious.
The investigation provides a few concerning examples as they spoke to more than a dozen people, including physicians and a state medical examiner. Both of them have filed serious injury reports using VAERS on behalf of themselves or patients.
Some of them were never contacted by clinical reviewers.
For example, a veteran medical examiner, forensic pathologist and the current chief medical examiner for the state of Connecticut, James Gill, made his first VAERS report in 2021. It was for a 15-year-old boy who died suddenly days after getting a second jab —what Gill concluded in an autopsy to be a result of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
It was not until he published his reports in the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine in February 2022 that the CDC responded. They did so in the form of a letter to the editor contesting Gill’s findings.
Another example from the BMJ:
Patrick Whelan, a rheumatologist and researcher at the University of California Los Angeles, who in 2022 reported how one of his patients, a 7 year old boy, had a cardiac arrest after covid vaccination. The patient was intubated when Whelan filed a VAERS report, and he expected a prompt follow-up call from a CDC investigator.
“I assumed that, since it was a catastrophic event, the safety committee would want to hear about it right away,” he says. But, to his knowledge, nobody called or requested medical records. In an email sent to Whelan months later the FDA said that it had followed up “soon after” receiving his report and had made “several requests” for medical records. The agency added, “Generally speaking, staff might not reach out to providers unless they have specific questions about a case or a VAERS report.”
Last but not least, the BMJ provides another example from a woman named “Helen." Helen asked to use a pseudonym to protect her employment.
Has all of the ridicule towards those who raised concerns regarding these shots led to a culture of self censorship?
Helen is an intensive care and emergency physician who filed reports on behalf of multiple patients, including six who died. She told The BMJ that she received a request for medical records for just one of the deaths and for two of her patients admitted to the hospital.
How is this acceptable as a means of investigating vaccine related deaths reported by medical workers?
Why isn’t the CDA/FDA putting more resources toward addressing these issues with VAERS?
With millions of VAERS reports, especially the serious ones, how many are we to assume suffered the same fate?
The Lack of Acknowledgement
It hasn’t been surprising to witness the complete lack of acknowledgement of serious vaccine injuries by multiple government health authorities.
You would think they would openly investigate this issue, or at least be transparent with the public. Or at the very least, let them know that there have been concerning safety signals detected. But this has only happened mildly with myocarditis.
That being said, many are doing great work in exploring the possible mechanisms of action as to why these injuries are occurring. I outline a few in this article I wrote last year, and in this one I published earlier this year.
Governments should not be accepting the deaths of so many individuals believed to be caused by the vaccine without seeking to understand why, or if it’s even true. They have the resources to do so, why not perform autopsies at a higher rate?
We can open deceased bodies from COVID, or suspected vaccination injury, stain for the spike protein or nucleocapsid protein, and determine the cause of death. Have they done this for even a fraction of the 22,000 deaths reported in VAERS?
It’s been done by researchers, like the one example from Gill above.
Last year, I wrote about a paper published in Clinical Cardiology on November 27, 2022 titled "Autopsy-based histopathological characterization of myocarditis after anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination." It describes the autopsy findings and common characteristics of myocarditis in untreated persons who received the shot.
They determined that the deaths of 5 out of the 25 people (bodies) examined, who died suddenly after vaccination, were most likely result of the vaccine itself.
There are multiple autopsy reports like this.
According to reporting systems around the world, covid vaccines have resulted in millions of vaccine injury reports. All people are asking for is a proper investigation into the actual safety and effectiveness of these vaccines given the number of injury reports seen.
COVID-19 vaccine uptake for more recent doses is incredibly low. Perhaps it’s because people don’t trust the lack of response to reports. According to the US Census Bureau (see my last article), among adults who did not get vaccinated, nearly 50 percent cited a lack of trust for institutions like the CDC, as well as concerns over side-effects. Perhaps it’s just concerning science that’s been published.
We consistently hear that numbers in VAERS can’t be used as anyone can make a claim. Yet we see medical professionals’ claims are rarely taken seriously, so why even have the reporting system? Just to create the illusion that these matters are and have been looked into?
Thus far, the CDC has officially confirmed just nine deaths caused by COVID-19 vaccines. The Johnson & Johnson shot was the culprit according to the CDC. It appears they have not acknowledged any deaths from Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. These claims fly in the face of deaths reported around the world by various people, medical professionals, scientists and other healthcare workers.
Perhaps the close relationships between agencies like the CDC and the pharmaceutical industry has something to do with it? Perhaps it’s just a product perpetuated by the revolving door culture we see in this field.
It is no wonder why there is a growing loss of trust in our institutions.