[kiltedpanda]

I had the same experience as the guy in this BMJ article in terms of trouble filing a report. The process was extremely cumbersome and had to be lodged through my physician. The physician had no idea what paperwork was required or how to fill it out once I found it for him. I don't know whether the report was actually registered in the national database.

My mother-in-law was bedridden for days after each booster (without filing a VAERS report) until her doctor eventually said she maybe shouldn't take any more (god forbid she risk her practicing license by uttering the heresy that the vaccine may not be 100% safe).

A better measure of the prevalence of adverse events are the randomized phone surveys done by countries like Israel. They called 2000 people after their second dose, and magically 4% of men and 7% of women experienced chest pain soon afterwards. What a coincidence!

[serial_dev]

I had the AstraZeneca vaccine and I was very sick for a week (I couldn't get out of bed and had 39+ Celsius fever) and for a month it was hard for me to walk to the nearby grocery store. The Pfizer vaccine, the second for me, was only slightly better.

Half a year after the vaccines, I had irregular heart beats, at one point more than thousand a day. It's a horrible experience, because even when I had only tens of irregular heart beats a day, I could feel most of them. Now imagine that a thousand times a day, especially knowing that cardiovascular issues are a common side effect.

And I still didn't report anything (Germany) as I don't believe anyone would come out of it. Not to be too cynical, but the Russia-Ukraine war "cured" COVID in Europe, so apart from staying alive and not taking anymore vaccines myself, I didn't care about the issue as I was no longer forced to take further "vaccines" to be a free man.

In the end, there are arguments both for these systems under reporting (cases like mine and many variations of it) and over reporting (in a comment someone mentioned that people maliciously report things or just in general people noticing small things and reporting that as side effect), and it's hard to come up with a sound estimation as to which one is the reality.

[kiltedpanda]

Brutal, sorry to hear that. Hope you're feeling better!

I personally don't believe the suggestion of over-reporting is an issue at all. I recall reading that in the VAERS back end they can see which entries are made by individuals vs a doctor or doctor's office, so this could be easily verified.

I also recall reading that the majority of entries made in VAERS are by medical professionals but I can't locate the source for that.

[giantg2]

Patients can self report without the provider being involved. You might not have some info like lot numbers, but you can still submit. It was a bit of an ordeal to submit, although I've heard it got easier after they made updates during covid (not sure if that's true).

[kiltedpanda]

I'm in Canada. I used the term VAERS, but I meant the Canadian equivalent reporting system. In Canada self-reporting isn't permitted - it has to go through a doctor. Then you're subject to doctor's biases as well. In my case, with first onset of chest pain a couple of days after the second dose, his bias led him to hypothesize that it could have been from a latent Covid infection (with zero covid symptoms). That theory was squashed when I caught Covid a few weeks later.

[cempaka]

An American friend of mine in his mid thirties developed cardiac issues after 3 doses of Moderna, but his doctors doggedly attribute it to his mild COVID case (and he is of course happy to believe that rather than that the damage may have been self-inflicted).

[kiltedpanda]

Would a peer reviewed study in the European Journal of Heart Failure finding 1 in 35 people suffered heart damage after a Moderna booster shot change his mind?

https://farmersforum.com/one-in-35-people-suffered-heart-dam...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejhf.2978

[giantg2]

That's a major problem. Anything that could possibly be caused by the vaccine, or has an unknown cause, should be reported. You want the raw data without the biases of doctors guessing if something is related or not. Then the data scientists and researchers can clean the data.

[waterhouse]

Indeed. The extreme version would be to collect data about "all problems, period", and compare the rates of "people who got the vaccine in the last N weeks" against a control group. Like looking at "excess deaths" to estimate the deaths caused by COVID. Picking the right control group might be tricky, though...

[giantg2]

Yeah, I looked at doing some analysis for a vaccine related injury. There aren't really any control groups for the mandatory vaccines. The best you can do is try to time box it like you're talking about. Even using groups that may not vaccinate (certain religious sects usually) may have issues with the sampling not being random due to genetics and demographics in those communities.

I wanted to do the time boxing like you suggest, but access to anonymous records with that level of detail and with a sufficient size is not easy to come by (as a lay person for free at least).

[bigtex]

Vaccines are safer than water!

[ben_w]

I doubt any medical doctor has claimed that.

Heck, I doubt any have even said that an injection of saline solution is as safe as normal water consumption.

[giantg2]

You might be surprised. I've heard a doctor I know personally who is so pro vaccine that they have stated they are absolutely safe (not generally safe) and they wish they could secretly give the vaccine (specifically covid) to kids who's parents decline.

[el_benhameen]

Unless you have the overall incidence of self-reported chest pain or that of those who didn’t get the vaccine in the same period, those aren’t particularly meaningful numbers.

[kiltedpanda]

2000 people is a pretty good sample size. It is true though that I'm hazarding a guess that the background rate of chest pain in any given timeframe is slightly lower than ~5%.