The CDC and FDA created the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in 1990 as a way for people to report post-vaccination health issues. The intention was to identify patterns in reporting that might point to potential safety concerns, think things like allergic reactions, headaches, blood clots, and the like.
VAERS is self-reported and open to the public, and causal effects aren’t identified. So if I get vaccinated on Monday and trip on my front porch on Tuesday, I could report my scraped knee to VAERS. The CDC and FDA don’t restrict what can be entered, so poeple will literally report their child coming out as gay due to vaccinations, and that data is open and searchable to the public. But not everyone is aware of this distinctrion or in the nature of self-reported information, which is why the CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, offered to educate Greene and her staff on how VAERS works.
This is what you get when the playbook only involves grandstanding and soundbites. Questions get asked, and during reasonable responses, politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene “reclaim their time,” rather than actually have a dialog. They aren’t interested in solving problems or serving the American public.
Green likes her staff like she likes her voters — misinformed.
Image credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
