The Startling COVID Shot Death and Illness Figures

Safe and effective – that has been the COVID shot mantra.

But California figures show the shot was not nearly as safe as a regular vaccine. And as to effective, well it depends upon how the word is defined: it did not prevent transmission, did not prevent people from getting COVID, and while it may have prevented more serious illness if you caught COVID, it is far from clear how well it did even that.

What is clear, according to the Center for Disease Control’s own “Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), is that at least 640 Californians died between late 2020 and May, 2023 after receiving the shot, and another 89,000 or so fell ill to varying degrees after the shot.

For comparison purposes, 66 people died from every other vaccine combined and about 14,000 were sickened during the same time period.  That means a person was more than 9 times as likely to die from the COVID shot as any other vaccine and 6.5 times more likely to get sick.

It also means that – since 89 million shots have been administered in the state – that 1 out of a 1,000 people experienced some sort of negative effect from the shot. While that does not sound too high, it should be remembered that more typical vaccines, such as those for polio and tetanus, typically have a negative impact ration of – literally –  one in a million (some other vaccines have higher rates, but it appears none approach the COVID shot figure.)

One in a thousand versus one in a million – that makes the COVID shot 1,000 times riskier than other, more traditional, vaccines. And California’s numbers are reflective of national figures.

An important note:  the VAERS system website has numerous disclaimers on it basically stating that the system should not be trusted.  For example:

VAERS accepts reports of adverse events that occur following vaccination. Anyone, including healthcare providers, vaccine manufacturers, and the public, can submit reports to the system. While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. Vaccine providers are encouraged to report any clinically significant health problem following vaccination to VAERS even if they are not sure if the vaccine was the cause. In some situations, reporting to VAERS is required of healthcare providers and vaccine manufacturers. 

And:

VAERS reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable.

And:

The number of reports alone cannot be interpreted as evidence of a causal association between a vaccine and an adverse event, or as evidence about the existence, severity, frequency, or rates of problems associated with vaccines.

The disclaimers are so significant that, when asked about the figures, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) simply reiterated them :

“VAERS data alone cannot determine if the vaccine caused the reported adverse event. This specific limitation has caused confusion about the publicly available data, specifically regarding the number of reported deaths. In the past there have been instances where people misinterpreted reports of death following vaccination as death caused by the vaccines; that is a mistake. VAERS accepts all reports of adverse events following vaccination without judging whether the vaccine caused the adverse health event. Some reports to VAERS might represent true vaccine reactions, and others might be coincidental adverse health events not related to vaccination at all. Generally, a causal relationship cannot be established using information from VAERS reports alone. The number of reports submitted to VAERS may increase in response to media attention and increased public awareness. It is not possible to use VAERS data to calculate how often an adverse event occurs in a population.”

CDC also notes that COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying. COVID-19 vaccines can also offer added protection to people who had COVID-19, including protection against being hospitalized from a new infection. COVID-19 vaccination helps protect people by creating an immune response without the potentially severe illness or post-COVID conditions that can be associated with COVID-19 infection.

But, putting aside for the moment why the CDC would bother to create and maintain for more than 30 years such a terrible and misleading system, there is – most significantly – one paragraph in the first disclaimer on the website:  

The strengths of VAERS are that it is national in scope and can often quickly detect an early hint or warning of a safety problem with a vaccine (emphasis added). VAERS is one component of CDC’s and FDA’s multifaceted approach to monitoring safety after vaccines are licensed or authorized for use. There are multiple, complementary systems that CDC and FDA use to capture and validate data from different sources. VAERS is designed to rapidly detect unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse events, also referred to as “safety signals.”

In other words, while the data may not be completely and finally accurate, it is collected to be used in essence as a canary in a coal mine, a trip wire, a warning that something is not at all right. Additionally, when comparing VAERS numbers to other VAERS numbers (COVID shot versus non-COVID vaccine) the issue essentially disappears as, even if they are bruised, the comparison is “apples to apples.”

Therefore, the COVID shot (note we have not referred to it as a vaccine because it is not one) is clearly far more perilous than other actual real vaccines.

And with more than half of the California deaths associated with the COVID shot coming in the first few months of its widespread rollout in the first five months of 2021 – massively outpacing other vaccine fatalities – it would appear that canary was ignored.

When asked about this, the California Department of Public Health responded with more boilerplate, ignoring the specific issue at hand:

COVID-19 vaccines have undergone the most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history. In addition to VAERS, vaccine safety monitoring also uses other established systems like the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Project. COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. COVID-19 vaccines were evaluated in tens of thousands of participants in clinical trials. The vaccines met the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) rigorous scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality.

There is also another issue doctors say is a weakness of the VAERS system – it is clumsy and time consuming and is believed to significantly undercount adverse effects, no matter the vaccine.  It can take upwards of an hour to report an effect, time few doctors and nurses have to spare to labor through the system.

Ironically, the other system set up to specifically to track COVID adverse effects – V-Safe – has just been shut down, though the CDC promises it will replace it with something else soon.  As the CDC is still pushing booster shots for children as young as six months old, why it would dismantle another way to track their safety is mind boggling.  

For example, as noted in this article, to this day it is still possible to report safety problems with your 30-year-old Ford Bronco II to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

Interestingly, the V-Safe information also shows the COVID shot as rather problematic.

There have been about 613 million shots given in the United States; of that number, there were a reported 3,353,110 adverse effects bad enough to cause either be “unable to resume normal activities, miss work or school, or seek medical attention.”

That figure is even more troubling that the VAERS number as V-Safe put’s the adverse effect number at about 1 in 185.

V-Safe numbers state-by-state were not readily available.

None of this information comes as a surprise to Dr. Mark McDonald, who has been active in the fight against the state’s attempt to force doctors to hew to the “party line” on all things COVID.

“These numbers point to the exceptional toxicity of the mRNA shot,” Mc Donald said.  “The ratios are staggeringly high.”

McDonald said the figures also show the complete lack of any form of harm/benefit analysis.

“Harm must be compared to benefit,” McDonald said.  “They didn’t stop transmission and they didn’t stop infection.  The shots carried enormous risks for a total lack of benefit.”

Safe and effective, indeed.