The CDC maintains a database called Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) that tracks the problems reported by vaccine recipients. Problems range from a brief headache to sudden death, and reporting is optional, so dd.
America has been vaccinating adults against seasonal flu and kids against a growing number of things for decades, generating in the process a modest but steady background noise of side effects.
Until this year, when both adverse events and deaths spiked.
Maybe some kind of statistical quirk explains this dramatic change. For instance, a lot more people might be getting vaccinated lately, which would lead to a jump in reports even as per-capita risks remain low. Or maybe the people who compiled the above chart misunderstood the raw data.
Or maybe it’s something else. Wonder what it could be…