A plausible range of capture rates for a passive surveillance system such as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) runs from 2% all of the way up to 18% — which was the interquartile range (the middle 50%) of all recorded capture rates from a review of 37 studies.
When the rate of capture is just 2%, then it means that there are 98 unreported events for every 2 which get reported, so that the total burden of adverse events is 50 times what is getting reported.
When the rate of capture is all of the way up to 18%, then it means that there are 5.5 actual adverse events for each single event that makes it into the VAERS system.
Because the death reports in the VAERS system in 2021 were 59 times higher than the death reports in 2020, a “what-if” analysis can be performed to find the best-possible scenario which explains the difference using harm-minimizing assumptions.
This analysis would create the most rosy-looking scenario, so that scenarios going beyond it would become pollyannish (mere flights-of-fancy).
Deliberately assuming the extremes of plausibility in order to put the case in the best possible light, the increase in deaths in 2021 is still more than 6-fold.
Vaccines in 2021 were, at minimum, over 6 times more deadly than vaccines in 2020 (55,994 deaths vs. 8550 deaths).
Reference
[VAERS reports] — OpenVAERS (set toggle to the right to narrow scope to US territories only). https://openvaers.com/covid-data
[The plausible range of adverse event (AE) capture rates goes from a low of 2% up to a high of 18%: the interquartile range of the 37 studies reviewed] — Hazell L, Shakir SA. Under-reporting of adverse drug reactions : a systematic review. Drug Saf. 2006;29(5):385-96. doi: 10.2165/00002018-200629050-00003. PMID: 16689555. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16689555/