The VAERS data consists of both US and Foreign reports of adverse events. The US data consists of the original 50 states plus territories and freely associated states1. The Foreign data is anything outside of that. Since most people think about VAERS as a reporting system for the US, you can make a valid case that the foreign data is not that relevant and perhaps doesn’t need to be included in our analysis. This is especially true, given that countries have their own vaccine monitoring systems (eg. in the UK, the MHRA has the YellowCard system), and if you were really interested in the vaccine data for a different country, you would likely seek information not from VAERS, but rather from the vaccine system of the country you are interested in. Furthermore, how useful can the foreign data actually be if VAERS is not making it known which country each foreign record is from?
When examining the US vs. Foreign data, we find something interesting: even though US records consist of 91% of the total number of adverse events, US records only comprise 68% of the number of deaths. That means that while the foreign records are a small 9% of the total number of adverse events, they comprise a relatively outsized 32% of the death records.
OK, so what happens when we remove the Foreign records? What do the High-Level Summary figures look like?
| High-Level Summary | COVID19 vaccines (Dec’2020 – present) without Foreign | COVID19 vaccines (Dec’2020 – present) with Foreign | All other vaccines 1994-present without Foreign | All other vaccines 1990-present with Foreign | All other vaccines 1990-present without Foreign |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Adverse Reactions | 293,519 | 294,800 | 670,836 | 706,906 | 806,122 |
| Number of Life-Threatening Events | 5,250 | 5,316 | 8,722 | 9,394 | 13,157 |
| Number of Hospitalizations | 17,476 | 17,619 | 33,641 | 37,140 | 76,871 |
| Number of Deaths | Â 4,436 * | 5,165 | 4,246 | 4,938 | 8,725 |
| # of Permanent Disabilities after vaccination | 3,938 | 3,994 | 10,759 | 11,536 | 18,548 |
| Number of Office Visits | 51,113 | 51,131 | 39,615 | 39,620 | 40,844 |
| # of Emergency Room/Department Visits | 39,035 | 39,078 | 186,388 | 199,339 | 208,149 |
| # of Birth Defects after vaccination | 156 | 157 | 76 | 76 | 121 |
The most obvious and stark difference is in the death counts. While the number of deaths associated with the Covid-19 vaccines is lower than if we had included the foreign data, you can see that once we exclude the foreign data, the entire universe of vaccine-related deaths (from 1990 onwards) drops significantly, by 43%. Also very notable is the fact that in order to accumulate enough non-Covid-19 vaccine deaths to match the number of Covid-19 vaccine deaths you now have to go back 27 years, to 1994.
The number of hospitalizations since 1990 without the foreign data is also fairly notable, almost a 50% drop.
1The following US territories and freely associated states are found in the data:
AS – American Samoa
GU – Guam
MP – Northern Mariana Islands
PR – Puerto Rico
VI – U.S. Virgin Islands
FM – Micronesia
MH – Marshal Islands
PW – Palau
QM – Midway Islands
XB – Baker Island
XV – Navassa Island
