18% of all Serious Adverse Event Reports for Moderna involved Death
A Statistically-significant Increased Share
Back in 1999, only 9% of all serious adverse event reports (AER) in the VAERS system involved death. The share of all serious AERs made up of deaths had started high and peaked in 1993 — but from 1995 forward, there was never a year when deaths made up more than an 11% share of all serious AERs.
To find out if the 18% Moderna rate is significantly higher than expected, I set up simultaneous, Poisson-process confidence intervals using a particular confidence level that results in just a 5% chance of non-overlap.
Here are the notes:
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Merry Christmas!
Reference
[VAERS reports] — Medalerts. https://medalerts.org/vaersdb/index.php
[11 years of VAERS] — MMWR Surveill Summ. 2003 Jan 24;52(1):1-24. Surveillance for safety after immunization: Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)--United States, 1991-2001. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5201a1.htm
[Determining required simultaneous confidence levels to maintain an alpha, given the ratio of standard errors] — Payton ME, Greenstone MH, Schenker N. Overlapping confidence intervals or standard error intervals: what do they mean in terms of statistical significance? J Insect Sci. 2003;3:34. doi: 10.1093/jis/3.1.34. Epub 2003 Oct 30. PMID: 15841249; PMCID: PMC524673. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC524673/