Dear CDC Officials,

We are a research team with members from Seattle, Washington; Wisconsin; and Chicago, IL, actively expanding our ongoing study of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Our goal is to pinpoint and fix gaps in how vaccine damages were tracked during the COVID mRNA vaccine roll-out. In a best-case scenario, text descriptions (free-text fields) often omit key details or use varying wording, so automated searches (like regex patterns) rescued critical, otherwise overlooked information, preventing under-counting of side effects in the CDC's auditing process. These early results are shared in articles from 2023–2024 at https://deepdots.substack.com (attached as Exhibits A–F; authored by Gary Hawkins). Example exhibits are outlined below. More will be forthcoming.

Our data comes from all VAERS drop records since its inception (provided by a computer scientist with over 40 years of experience who created medalerts.org.) We are using the snapshots to allow us to compare what changed, with COVID-19 era being of particular interest.

Our project delivers a single, easy-to-use file that keeps all changes in their original rows. This helps data scientists work faster and more accurately to improve VAERS transparency and accountability.

So far, our work-in-progress shows clear areas that need attention:

• A. Detailed patient stories (narrative fields) were removed from reports outside the U.S., limiting full review (Exhibit A);
• B. Follow-up reports, including some that confirmed deaths, were later deleted (Exhibit B);
• C. Batch numbers (lot data) for Pfizer and Moderna are missing, blocking the ability to follow specific groups (Exhibit C);
• D. Serious blood clots in the lungs (pulmonary embolisms) appear under-reported due to weak labels (tagging) (Exhibit D);
• E. Many batch code mistakes (lot code errors) were fixed over time, pointing to early tracking problems (Exhibit E);
• F. Some severe reactions were labeled as mild, softening their real impact (Exhibit F).

We are still building this project and believe these early signals could lead to stronger VAERS practices and better public health protection. We would value your interest and input at this stage.

We invite you to:

Review the attached exhibits and let us know your thoughts; Share any insights on how VAERS data is managed; Explore ways we might work together to improve reporting.

Thank you for considering this developing work. We are ready to provide updates, raw data, or a live walk-through at your convenience over your preferred tele-communication platform.

Sincerely,

Jason Page

Exhibits

Exhibit A: Removal of Free-Text Fields

Source: "New VAERS Flat File: Easy Data Mining" (June 12, 2023)
Issue: Free-text fields (e.g., symptom narratives, lab data) for foreign VAERS reports were removed, limiting global adverse event analysis.
Impact: Obscures safety signals by reducing contextual data.

Exhibit B: Deletion of Follow-Up Reports

Source: "Undeleting a Gigabyte of Data Purged" (October 3, 2023)
Issue: Follow-up reports confirming deaths were deleted, with only initial reports retained.
Impact: Underreports fatalities, skewing safety analyses.

Exhibit C: Missing Pfizer & Moderna Lot Data (two articles)

Source 1: "Where are the missing 1,290 lots/batches in the Pfizer FOIA request response?" (August 8, 2023)
Issue: 1,290 Pfizer lot codes, linked to thousands of adverse event reports each, were absent from FOIA data.
Source 2: "Further info on the 958 missing lots/batches from the Moderna FOIA request" (August 15, 2023)
Issue: FOIA Request by ICAN provided a list of Moderna COVID vaccine lot codes and expiration dates. However, 958 lots were absent compared to a comprehensive list of 1,343 known Moderna lot codes. These missing lots are linked to thousands of adverse event reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), including 19,659 harm reports tied to 103 lots without expiration dates.
Impact: Hinders tracking of batch-specific adverse events.

Exhibit D: Underreporting Pulmonary Embolisms

Source: "Far More Pulmonary Embolisms in VAERS From Covid Vaccines Than Others Are Reporting" (January 11, 2023)
Issue: 408 pulmonary embolism cases (8% sample of 4,976 reports manually reviewed) were not tagged.
Impact: Systematic underreporting of severe adverse events.

Exhibit E: Correction of Lot Code Typos

Source: "Overview: AI Fixed 150,000 Lot Numbers" (April 2, 2024)
Issue: Approximately 150,000 VAERS reports contained lot code typos (e.g., misspellings, incorrect formats) for COVID vaccines, which were corrected using AI-driven analysis.
Impact: Uncorrected typos could fragment data, leading to underreporting of adverse events associated with specific lots and complicating batch-specific safety analyses.

Exhibit F: Misclassification of Serious Reports

Source: "85% Are Serious in VAERS Reports Not Tagged as Serious" (December 4, 2023)
Issue: 85% of VAERS reports not tagged as “serious” contain symptoms meeting serious criteria (e.g., life-threatening conditions, hospitalizations).
Impact: Misclassification underestimates the severity of adverse events, potentially masking critical safety signals.