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> I think you're lying and/or stupid

> You don't seem to know very much

Whoa. You can't attack another user like that here, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN, we'd appreciate it.

I realize that other comments in this thread were also bad, but this one stands out as particularly personal. That's not cool.

That's absolutely wrong.

Reporting to VAERS is voluntary. Doctors in your typical HMO practice are extremely busy and highly time managed. They need to be keeping up a high rate of patient visits and doing all the paperwork for each of them.

They aren't paid to report to VAERS, it's just another thing to do in a very busy and exhausting day.

If you want to make VAERS into actually usable data doctors should have to report any significant internal change to a patient's health within 72 hours of the vaccine administration, and non-doctor reports should have their own channel because the data quality is likely to be lower. Doctors also need to have some time credit from their employer for handling VAERS reporting.

I'm commenting confidently because I know of what I speak.

> Reporting to VAERS is voluntary.

You should stop posting this garbage. It's easily verifiable that you're talking out of your ass:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/...

Healthcare providers who administer COVID-19 vaccines are required to report the following to VAERS:

Vaccine administration errors whether or not associated with an adverse event (AE). If the incorrect mRNA COVID-19 vaccine product was inadvertently administered for a second dose in a 2-dose series, VAERS reporting is required. If a different product from the primary series is inadvertently administered for the additional or booster (third dose), VAERS reporting is required. VAERS reporting is not required for the following situations: If a mixed series is given intentionally (e.g., due to hypersensitivity to a vaccine ingredient) Mixing and matching of booster doses intentionally (as of October 21, 2021, mixing and matching of booster doses is allowed) Serious AEs regardless of causality. Serious AEs per FDA are defined as: Death A life-threatening AE Inpatient hospitalization or prolongation of existing hospitalization A persistent or significant incapacity or substantial disruption of the ability to conduct normal life functions A congenital anomaly/birth defect An important medical event that based on appropriate medical judgement may jeopardize the individual and may require medical or surgical intervention to prevent one of the outcomes listed above Cases of myocarditis after a Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax, or Janssen COVID-19 vaccine Cases of pericarditis after a Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax, or Janssen COVID-19 vaccine Cases of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in children and adults Cases of COVID-19 that result in hospitalization or death

There is no enforcement. Nothing bad happens to the provider if she forgets or thinks the reaction has another cause.

Well yeah it’s to identify stuff from the tables that wasn’t well-represented in the study population. You might wanna go back and study it a bit more.

Here's some good critique of VAERS. Please note he rebuts common arguments against his analysis in the text.

https://researchrebel.substack.com/p/cdc-finally-released-it...

> You are very misinformed if you think vaccine manufacturers are not liable for their products. They are exempt from normal civil suits because of their mandatory nature (nobody would make a mandatory medical product at the usual rate of medical malpractice suits), but the FDA is authorized to withdraw products and levy fines for defective/harmful vaccines, and has done so many times in the past.

I must be severely misinformed as well, because I remember signing a waiver that prevents me from filing a civil suit. I don’t see how such things as negligence and/or willful misrepresentation of benefits and risks can be remedied simply by having the FDA say “whoops, actually you can’t inject this in people anymore.” That’s wildly different from being a able to provide restitution, let alone punish bad behavior.

> I don’t see how such things as negligence and/or willful misrepresentation of benefits and risks can be remedied simply by having the FDA say “whoops, actually you can’t inject this in people anymore.

... because making things to inject in people is their whole business model and if the FDA says that enough they cease to exist as a company? Pretty solid deterrence.

>... because making things to inject in people is their whole business model and if the FDA says that enough they cease to exist as a company?

1. That's a stretch. These companies sell more than just COVID vaccines.

2. How does a patient that was injured by the vaccine, through manufacturer negligence, say, obtain restitution?

I'm glad the FDA is still regulating the vaccine. I wish my constitutional right to bringing civil suit were similarly preserved before I was coerced by my employer into taking the vaccine.

IIUC restitution comes via the vaccine injury compensation program (https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation) and is divorced from any preventative or punitive process applied to the manufacturer.

> my constitutional right to bringing civil suit

Um... Is that a Constitutional right? I don't see "civil suit" mentioned anywhere. You could, perhaps, claim it should be considered an always-on right as per common law in due process, except there's already a whole host of possible injuries one can sustain where there is no right to civil suit resulting, so I'm guessing SCOTUS has already at some point ruled that no such universal right exists, or that it's well within the purview of Congress to pass laws modifying / constraining / shaping said right.

Hell, you can't even sue the US government for misinforming you about geospatial data (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/456).

Yes, it absolutely is a constitutional right [0] and yes, we agree that some of the limitations imposed by the federal tort act are counterproductive. The latter is also irrelevant to the current discussion, which is about filing suit against a private pharmaceutical company.

> and is divorced from any preventative or punitive process applied to the manufacturer.

Yes, this is precisely what feels outrageous to me. I am constitutionally entitled to petitioning for restitution from the private actor, directly, and in a manner that does not a priori exclude punitive damages. I am rather concerned that many of us were coerced into waiving this right.

Aren’t you?

[0] see “right to petition” under first amendment, which includes the right to sue for the redress of grievances. I am surprised someone accusing others of being misinformed would overlook this.

The right to petition for redress of grievances is not abridged by the creation of methods other than a civil suit to redress a grievance. If it were, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/456 would be Unconstitutional on its face, and it does not seem to be (unless you can find evidence to the contrary in Court interpretation).

And in general: no, it doesn't feel outrageous to me. The law seems to have wide leeway to shape civil suit (statutes of limitations, bars to suit, no ability to sue agents of the government acting in the line of duty for burning one's house down to flush a criminal suspect), and the remedy would therefore be to elect better Congresspeople and state legislators if one is concerned about how civil law has been shaped.

> The right to petition for redress of grievances is not abridged by the creation of methods other than a civil suit to redress a grievance.

What a strange comment. Of course they aren’t. They’re abridged by the de facto obligation to get vaccinated (unless you want to lose your job) and — crucially - the total waiver of liability on the part of pharmaceutical companies.

It’s telling how you went from “you don’t have that right” to “okay, you have that right, but some particular thing isn’t violating it”. Im guessing the next stop is “okay, it was violated, but it’s not a big deal”.

I agree with you that redress of grievances is a Constituational right. Thank you for answering my original "Is that [bringing civil suit] a Constitutional right?" question with a framework in which one can see it as one.

> They’re abridged by the de facto obligation to get vaccinated (unless you want to lose your job)

Ah, here you do run into an issue. There is no Constitutional right to have a job. Kind of an oversight in the construction of the whole thing, really... Quite a bit of the pain in American culture can be traced to "The whole Constitution ultimately does not care if an individual starves to death because they can't participate in capitalism."

And there's plenty of precedent regarding one's health status precluding one from being able to have or maintain a job. Typhoid Mary, famously, was legally precluded from kitchen-work because she was a typhus carrier. Her repeated entry into that field in spite of this stricture placed on her for the health of the citizens of New York (and her entry into other service-sector fields, eventually resulting in the deaths of 3-50 New Yorkers) is how she eventually landed in permanent quarantine.