Analyzing New Zealand's "medically significant" VAERS reports

Were they systematically downplayed?

Summary:

• New Zealand dumped a lot of reports into VAERS right around the time the CDC moved from weekly to monthly updates

• A lot of reports mention that some symptoms are “medically significant”, but the reports have been filed as if they are not

  • a lot of same day reports were filed after a delay of more than a year

  • a very large percentage of these reports are missing the age field in the CSV file even if it is clearly mentioned in the writeup (this means it will not show up on CDC WONDER VAERS if you search by age)

  • a smaller percentage of reports are missing the NUMDAYS - days to symptom onset - field even if it is mentioned in the writeup

  • Despite the long delay in filing, over 40 reports for heart related injuries - such as myocarditis and pericarditis - still mention the outcome as “recovering”. This means there was no effort to followup despite the significant delay in filing the report.

  • At the end of the article, I provide an example VAERS report which shows just how clueless the medical establishment is nowadays

Note: in case you are wondering, I don’t have any opinion on Steve Kirsch’s New Zealand data analysis. But I will take the word of Albert Benavides from VAERS Aware when he says that you cannot map the data to what we already have in VAERS, so I am not going to be looking into it.

In October 2023, New Zealand suddenly dumped a lot of VAERS reports into the system.

This happened around the same time that the CDC moved from weekly to monthly updates (because apparently the COVID19 emergency is now over) as

Annette Gartland

wrote here:

CDC goes back to providing monthly VAERS updates

Maybe they hoped no one would notice?

If you group all the reports from New Zealand by RECVDATE you see this lopsided picture, with nearly 50% of all reports (for the COVID19) vaccine only getting added into the system after October 2023.

Interactive chart

Extracting “medically significant” symptoms

I created a dataset which has all the New Zealand VAERS reports for the COVID19 vaccine.

Click here to view the dataset

Of all these reports, I was most interested in the reports which used the phrase “medically significant”

Here is an example (emphasis mine):

Myocarditis; Fatigue; Lethargy; Dyspnoea; Oedema peripheral; This is a spontaneous report received from a contactable reporter(s) (Consumer or other non HCP) from Regulatory Authority. Regulatory number: NZ-MEDSAFE-144522 (Agency). A 79-year-old male patient received bnt162b2 (COMIRNATY), on 18Jun2021 as dose number unknown, single (Batch/Lot number: unknown) for covid-19 immunisation. The patient''s relevant medical history and concomitant medications were not reported. The following information was reported: DYSPNOEA (non-serious) with onset 19Jun2021, outcome "recovered"; FATIGUE (non-serious) with onset 19Jun2021, outcome "recovered"; LETHARGY (non-serious) with onset 19Jun2021, outcome "recovered"; MYOCARDITIS (medically significant) with onset 19Jun2021, outcome "recovered"; OEDEMA PERIPHERAL (non-serious) with onset 19Jun2021, outcome "recovered". Additional information: case was assessed as non-serious by Regulatory Authority. Onset latency was reported as "2 days" for all events. No follow-up attempts are possible; information about lot/batch number cannot be obtained. No further information is expected.

Source

In the VAERS report above, there are multiple symptoms, of which one (Myocarditis) is considered medically significant.

I added a column called MEDICALLY_SIGNIFICANT_SYMPTOMS

I do this by simply iterating over all the symptoms, then checking to see if the string “Symptom_name (medically significant)” appears in the text.

This does not work all the time¹, but it is good enough for this discussion.

Not all symptoms are also medically significant, as you can see in the example below.

Over 50% of the 196 death reports do not have a medically significant symptom

Filter for DIED = ‘Y’ in the dataset.

There are 196 death reports from New Zealand for the COVID19 vaccine.

Now filter for MED_SIG_SENT is empty

Quite remarkably, over 130 of these death reports did not have a single medically significant symptom!

Given that a medically significant symptom is not automatically considered as caused by the vaccine, I find it quite strange that so few death reports even had a medically significant symptom.

Now filter for SYMPTOM_LIST is not Death.

This will filter out all rows where the only symptom listed is Death. If death is the only symptom listed, it usually means we do not have much information about what happened.

There are still over a 100 of these reports.

Here is the writeup for the last row in that screenshot:

Cerebral thrombosis; This is a spontaneous report received from a contactable reporter (Physician) from Regulatory Authority. Regulatory number: AEFI-A-051333 Case Number. A 64 year-old male patient received bnt162b2 (COMIRNATY), administration date 26Sep2021 (Batch/Lot number: unknown) as dose 2, single for covid-19 immunisation. The patient''s relevant medical history and concomitant medications were not reported. The following information was reported: CEREBRAL THROMBOSIS (death) with onset 14Oct2021 12:00, outcome "fatal", described as "Cerebral thrombosis". The patient date of death was unknown. The reported cause of death was cerebral thrombosis. AEFI assessment: Outcome "Died" was unclassifiable. It was also reported "CARM report onset time unknown CVA 19 days after 2nd Covid vaccination". No follow-up attempts are possible; information about lot/batch number cannot be obtained. No further information is expected.; Reported Cause(s) of Death: Cerebral thrombosis

Source

As you can see, Cerebral Thrombosis was somehow not considered² medically significant even the writeup itself says quite clearly that it was the cause of death.

Delayed Reports with same day symptom onset

If NUMDAYS is zero, that means the symptom onset was on the same date as the date of vaccination.

Let us filter for all reports where the symptom onset was on the same date.

3187 reports had same day symptom onset.

Of these, 2382 (nearly 75%) of the reports were only received AFTER 1 Oct 2023.

To put this in context, let us filter for symptom onset date before 1 Oct 2022. There are 2365 such reports.

In other words, except for 17 reports (2382 - 2365), all the other same day reports which were filed after 1st October 2023 were at least a year old!

Of these 2365, 2359 had medically significant symptoms.

To put it all together, 2359 reports with same day symptom onset, which happened before 1st October 2022, and had at least one “medically significant” symptom, were delayed by at least 1 year to be added into VAERS.

What caused this delay?

Incomplete “medically significant” reports

Medical professionals use the age and the days to symptom onset as two important metrics while assessing causality of vaccine injuries.

If these fields are not provided in the CDC WONDER VAERS search, most people do not have the skillset to parse this information out from the writeup.

How often does this³ happen? A lot more often than it should!

If you filter the entire dataset for MED_SIG_SENT is not empty, there are a total of 4988 reports.

Of these, the AGE_YRS is missing in 2291 reports.

Of these 2085 reports do mention the age in the writeup.

In other words, over 90% of the reports which had at least one medically significant symptom did not translate the age in the CSV column even though it was mentioned in the writeup.

Similarly, the NUMDAYS is empty for 464 reports (out of the 4988 which are medically significant).

Of these, the time/days to symptom onset is mentioned in the writeup for 161 reports.

While this is obviously not as big a problem as the translation of the age value, it is quite notable that of these 161 reports the days to symptom onset, 154 of them happened within 30 days (i.e. over 95%).

Most research papers, such as the Qatar safety study (widely considered one of the best studies), use a 30 day window to assess causation.

Why do delayed reports still mention outcome as “recovering”?

There are 599 reports where the symptom contains one of the following terms: myocarditis, pericarditis, cardiac

Of these 245 mention the status of the injury as “recovering”

But 40 of these were only filed after 1st October 2023, meaning they had at least a year to do the followup.

Why were they not followed up to verify that the outcome was “recovered”?

As a contrast, here is an example report which explicitly says that the patient “recovered” (emphasis mine):

Myocarditis; Nausea; Dizziness; Chest discomfort; Vomiting; This is a spontaneous report received from a contactable reporter(s) (Physician) from Regulatory Authority. Regulatory number: AEFI-A-058749. A 14-year-old male patient received bnt162b2 (COMIRNATY), on 26Dec2021 as dose number unknown, single (Batch/Lot number: unknown) at the age of 14 years for covid-19 immunisation. The patient''s relevant medical history and concomitant medications were not reported. The following information was reported: CHEST DISCOMFORT (non-serious) with onset 26Dec2021, outcome "recovered"; DIZZINESS (non-serious) with onset 26Dec2021, outcome "recovered"; MYOCARDITIS (medically significant) with onset 26Dec2021, outcome "recovered"; NAUSEA (non-serious) with onset 26Dec2021, outcome "recovered"; VOMITING (non-serious) with onset 26Dec2021, outcome "recovered". Additional Information: case was assessed non-serious by Regulatory Authority. Onset reported 1 hour for all events. No follow-up attempts are possible; information about lot/batch number cannot be obtained. No further information is expected.

Source

Maybe someone should do FOIA requests for these 40 “recovering” VAERS reports to verify the outcomes?

What happened here?

To conclude, just look at this complete insanity which perfectly captures what happened during the global vaccine rollout (emphasis mine):

an echocardiogram on the 30th revealed a large blood clot in my heart; a significant amount of fluid around my heart; On Jan 28th I was admitted by ambulance to hospital and diagnosed with heart failure; I collapsed in the street on Jan 27.; Inappropriate schedule of vaccine administered; This is a spontaneous report received from a contactable reporter(s) (Consumer or other non HCP) from Regulatory Authority. The reporter is the patient. A 65-year-old female patient received BNT162b2 (COMIRNATY), on 12Jan2022 as dose 2, single (Batch/Lot number: unknown) for covid-19 immunisation. The patient''s relevant medical history and concomitant medications were not reported. Vaccination history included: BNT162b2 (DOSE 1, SINGLE), administration date: 24Nov2021, for COVID-19 immunisation, reaction(s): "Cardiac failure", "Dyspnoea", "Fatigue", "Palpitations", "Thrombosis". The following information was reported: INAPPROPRIATE SCHEDULE OF PRODUCT ADMINISTRATION (non-serious) with onset 12Jan2022, outcome "unknown", described as "Inappropriate schedule of vaccine administered"; CARDIAC FAILURE (hospitalization, Medically significant) with onset Jan2022, outcome "unknown", described as "On Jan 28th I was admitted by ambulance to hospital and diagnosed with heart failure"; PERICARDIAL EFFUSION (hospitalization, Medically significant) with onset Jan2022, outcome "unknown", described as "a significant amount of fluid around my heart"; SYNCOPE (medically significant) with onset 27Jan2022, outcome "unknown", described as "I collapsed in the street on Jan 27."; THROMBOSIS (hospitalization, medically significant) with onset 30Jan2022, outcome "unknown", described as "an echocardiogram on the 30th revealed a large blood clot in my heart". The patient was hospitalized for pericardial effusion, cardiac failure, thrombosis (start date: 28Jan2022, discharge date: 01Feb2022, hospitalization duration: 4 day(s)). The patient underwent the following laboratory tests and procedures: Echocardiogram: (30Jan2022) revealed a large blood clot in my heart.. Therapeutic measures were taken as a result of pericardial effusion, cardiac failure, thrombosis. Clinical course: Increased difficulty breathing. Worsening on even slight exhertion. Racing heartbeat, often in my throat, or sometimes it felt like my heart was vibrating. I was given reassurance that "it would pass", but It was ongoing and very severe by Christmas. It seemed to improve a little over January. After expressing my concerns to the nurses, I was given the second dose on 12Jan2022. Symptoms worsened again a few days later until I collapsed in the street on 27Jan. On 28Jan I was admitted by ambulance to hospital and diagnosed with heart failure, a significant amount of fluid around my heart, and an echocardiogram on the 30th revealed a large blood clot in my heart. I was discharged with medication on 01Feb. No follow-up attempts are possible; information about lot/batch number cannot be obtained. No further information is expected.

Source

1. As you can see from the next column called MED_SIG_SENT, not all reports follow this pattern. But enough of them do that I used it as a heuristic to extract the medically significant symptoms.

2. I want to argue the position of the other side here to make it more balanced. It is also possible that there were different people (or groups of people) who were processing these reports, and one of them had the habit of adding “medically significant” into the VAERS writeup, while the other did not.

While that is a possible explanation, it also means

a) not everyone was following similar guidelines for filing these reports

b) more importantly, there wasn’t a genuine effort to make the writeup as detailed and helpful as possible.

3. By this, I mean the fact that some information is clearly mentioned in the text writeup, but is not translated into the appropriate column in the VAERS CSV file