The number of adverse events due to COVID-19 vaccines reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website has surpassed 1 million.
The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, known as VAERS, reports that as of Dec. 24, there were 21,002 COVID vaccine deaths and 110,609 hospitalizations along with a total of 1,000,227 COVID vaccine adverse events. The figures are summarized on the independent site OpenVAERS.
However, many physicians and scientists believe the true figures are much higher. Physicians who sued the FDA for documents related to clinical trials for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine estimate the true numbers are five times higher. A recent study led by a researcher at Columbia University estimated the actual figures are higher by a factor of 20. If the underreporting factor is correct, it would mean that there are nearly 400,000 deaths due to COVID-19 vaccines.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R=Wis., who has held forums featuring the testimonies of people injured by COVID-19 vaccines, noted that among the deaths reported to the CDC, 30% occurred within two days of vaccination.
“When will federal agencies start being transparent with Americans?” he asked on Twitter. “Why do they continue to ignore early treatment?”
Johnson also has held Senate hearings on the suppression of early treatments for COVID.
In the Columbia study’s abstract, the researchers note that “accurate estimates of COVID vaccine-induced severe adverse event and death rates are critical for risk-benefit ratio analyses of vaccination and boosters against SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in different age groups.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services points out that a VAERS report is not documentation that a link has been established between a vaccine and an adverse event. However, HHS also notes that VAERS is a “passive” system of reporting, and it “receives reports for only a small fraction of actual adverse events.” Many health care workers have disclosed they are instructed by their superiors not to report to VAERS any harm caused by COVID vaccines.
VAERS is described as a “voluntary” reporting system, but HHS says that health-care providers “who administer COVID-19 vaccines are required by law after vaccination to report to VAERS” any errors in administering the shots along with, among other things, deaths and life-threatening adverse events.
A decade before COVID-19, the so-called Lazarus study by Harvard researchers estimated VAERS accounted for only 1% of vaccine-induced injuries.
Recently, Steve Kirsch, the executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, and others conducted an analysis comparing anaphylaxis rates published in a study to rates found in VAERS. They concluded the true death toll from COVID-19 vaccines is 41 times higher.
The website VAERS Analysis used whistleblower data from the CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to come up with an estimated underreporting factor of 44.64.
FDA data
Files obtained from the Food and Drug Administration in November through a Freedom of Information lawsuit recorded 158,893 adverse events from the Pfizer vaccine in the first two and a half months of distribution, including 25,957 incidents of “nervous system disorders.”
The lawsuit was filed by a group called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, comprised of more than 30 professors and scientists from universities including Yale, Harvard, UCLA and Brown. As WND reported, in court papers filed in December, the FDA proposed that it be given 55 years to release all 329,000 pages of documents related to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine requested by the group. The FDA has now modified that request, asking a judge for a delay of 75 years.
One of the scientists in the lawsuit is Dr. Peter McCullough, who has become an outspoken critic of universal COVID-19 vaccination.
In a recent, lengthy interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, he cited a study conducted before COVID by Dr. H. Cody Meissner of Tufts University School of Medicine finding that about 80% of VAERS reports are done by doctors, nurses or other health-care professionals who believe a vaccine caused the problem. Only about 14% or 15% of the reports are done by the patients themselves.
McCullough believes CMS data indicates VAERS underreports by a factor of about four or five.
With the CMS data, he said, “you know when someone got the shot and you know when they died.”
The proportion of Medicare and Medicaid patients in the U.S. population is known, he reasons, so an estimate can be obtained through extrapolation.
A factor of five was used in the lawsuit against the FDA, estimating 45,000 U.S. deaths due to COVID-19 vaccines while VAERS reported 9,000 at the time the case was filed.
