It's a source of information. It's just not the kind of information you are assuming it is. This is the layman's explanation of the function of VAERS and how the CDC uses the data:
If there are numerous reports by a variety of people (or medical professionals, or pharmaceutical companies) all stating similar side effects - then the CDC will look for patterns. If they find a pattern, they'll investigate it and see if there's any significant correlation that deserves further investigation to explore possible causation.
A guy who dies - and is discovered to have fallen out of that tree that I mentioned in my previous post - would not be counted among "people with problems that show a pattern with this vaccine." It would not be a correlation, it would be coincidental.
However - if all of a sudden you have 400 people who don't normally ever climb trees, all suddenly climbing trees and falling out of them and dying..
well now you have a pattern. And now the CDC has to check that out and see if there's something about the vaccine that is causing people to go insane and have some compulsion to climb trees and fall out of them.
I use this ridiculous example because it's the most obvious one I can think of that would really show a distinction between "correlation" and "causation" and why the CDC would only investigate certain data and disregard other data.
The info is made public, but it's not intended to be used by the public for anything at all. It is one tool among many that the CDC and the FDA use to gather data about vaccines. Nothing more or less.
|