VAERS is garbage in, garbage out. There is no curation since it is self reported, you may as well mine Reddit comments or Twitter to get the same data.
There clearly is some curation because reports appear in the database in batches. Reports can be self reported but don't have to be.
Regardless, even if everything you say is true, what it means is that governments deliberately run useless post-trial safety monitoring mechanisms. Which is terrifying and terrible. Putting all humanities eggs in one basket, literally.
Not really. Can have all cause mortality data from every year that tells us excess deaths. If we see a spike of 400k excess deaths for 2020 and 2021, then it’s pretty obvious how many to attribute to the virus.
Additionally, if someone is pCR positive, symptom positive, and dies from a cytokine storm, that’s pretty strong evidence.
But we don’t even need the latter. Excess deaths tell us approximately how many the virus killed, period, QED. There’s no denying COVID killed 10x more than the worst flu since 1918.
"Can have all cause mortality data from every year that tells us excess deaths."
Well, sort of for n-order impacts, but not for direct numbers. To do that the other variables have to stay the same, which clearly isn't the case with the affects of lockdown and medical system strains (increased drinking, drug use, mental health strains, etc; less preventative care and access to medical care, etc).
If the virus is indirectly killing people by overwhelming the healthcare system, i’d attribute the deaths to the virus.
Additionally I think we could look at countries whose health systems are bad or non-existent as a proxy to see excess deaths.
Are you trying to defend the notion that COVID isn’t any worse than the flu?
I’d say that as a balancing effect, the social distancing and masking of anything, has reduced deaths from other viruses in these last two years and so excess deaths might be undercounted. (Flu positivity is way down, and only 700 deaths recorded flu positive in 2020-2021 vs 22,000-39,000 in previous two years)
"Are you trying to defend the notion that COVID isn’t any worse than the flu?"
Nobody in this chain has suggested it. The person you responded to said that covid cases and death stats are garbage in garbage out. I would largely agree considering the underreporting of asymptomatic cases as well as the lack of distinction between causative and non-causitive hospitalizations and deaths.
The very argument you are making about possibly fewer deaths from other things supports my argument - the data doesn't exist to cover all the variables and some of the data is garbage. There is a huge difference between direct and n-order deaths, both for covid and other things. We could compare either one so long as we are all on the same page, but what's the point? The conversation was about data quality and not about lethality.
Do you think the data about excess deaths is less reliable than VAERS? On the one hand, we have actual factual data possibly with an unproven (but highly likely) correlation and on other hand, we have VAERS which can simply be spammed by anyone.
Regardless, even if everything you say is true, what it means is that governments deliberately run useless post-trial safety monitoring mechanisms. Which is terrifying and terrible. Putting all humanities eggs in one basket, literally.