Summary
- For each adverse event, the reporting rate per million doses is similar whether the denominator uses the 546 lots with known doses (840M) or all 6,130 lots including imputed doses (924M) — every ratio falls between 0.97 and 1.04.
- Adding the ~5,584 smaller lots with imputed doses does not materially change the rates.
- These are reporting rates from passive VAERS — not incidence, not causal.
840M
known doses (denominator A)
6,130
all lots (known + imputed)
924M
all doses (denominator B)
Serious events — reporting rate per million doses
| Serious event | Known doses /mil | All (incl. imputed) /mil | Ratio |
|---|
| Myocarditis | 1.83 | 1.82 | 0.99× |
| Pericarditis | 1.52 | 1.51 | 0.99× |
| Guillain-Barre syndrome | 0.67 | 0.67 | 1.00× |
| Anaphylactic reaction | 1.92 | 1.88 | 0.98× |
| Pulmonary embolism | 3.16 | 3.26 | 1.03× |
| Deep vein thrombosis | 2.40 | 2.50 | 1.04× |
| Thrombocytopenia | 0.86 | 0.85 | 0.99× |
| Bell's palsy | 2.74 | 2.73 | 1.00× |
| Seizure | 4.59 | 4.55 | 0.99× |
| Cerebrovascular accident | 3.08 | 3.14 | 1.02× |
| Death | 12.98 | 12.50 | 0.96× |
| Myocardial infarction | 1.31 | 1.33 | 1.02× |
| Cardiac arrest | 1.42 | 1.40 | 0.99× |
Symptom categories — reporting rate per million doses
Overall (any report): 721 /mil (known) vs 728 /mil (all).
| Category | Known /mil | All /mil | Ratio |
|---|
| Neurological | 230.8 | 228.3 | 0.99× |
| Fever / Chills | 158.3 | 157.6 | 1.00× |
| Dermatological | 150.2 | 150.9 | 1.00× |
| Fatigue / Malaise | 133.9 | 133.2 | 0.99× |
| Musculoskeletal | 133.9 | 133.8 | 1.00× |
| Gastrointestinal | 105.0 | 104.0 | 0.99× |
| Injection site | 99.7 | 100.9 | 1.01× |
| Respiratory | 97.0 | 96.1 | 0.99× |
| Chest pain / Cardiac | 68.2 | 67.8 | 0.99× |
| Sleep | 21.7 | 22.0 | 1.01× |
| Tinnitus / Hearing | 20.2 | 20.2 | 1.00× |
| Anaphylaxis / Allergy | 18.3 | 18.2 | 0.99× |
| Mental Health | 17.3 | 17.0 | 0.98× |
| Vision | 16.2 | 16.0 | 0.99× |
| Thromboembolic | 9.2 | 9.4 | 1.02× |
| Menstrual / Reproductive | 8.5 | 8.4 | 0.99× |
| Cognitive | 6.2 | 6.2 | 1.00× |
Method & important caveats
How the two denominators are built
- Known doses: 546 COVID lots with per-lot dose counts from openVAERS (third-party; validated against their published rates at r=0.999 for deaths).
- Imputed doses: for lots without a known dose, doses are estimated from a reactogenicity-index calibration (reports ÷ per-manufacturer reports-per-dose coefficient). This imputation is only reliable in aggregate — the all-lots total (~0.92B) matches the true US total (~1B). Per-lot estimates are unreliable (cross-validation R² < 0), so imputed doses are used here only for pooled rate denominators, never per lot.
What these rates are not
- Reporting rates, not incidence or causal rates. A VAERS report is an unverified, temporally-associated claim.
- Because imputed doses are derived from reactogenicity report volume, rates for the reactogenicity categories themselves (Fever/Chills, Fatigue, Musculoskeletal) are partly self-referential in the “all lots” column; the serious, distinct events (myocarditis, thrombosis, GBS) are the meaningful comparison.
- Rates are pooled across manufacturers, ages, and eras — all of which shift the numbers and are analyzed separately in the lot AE analysis and rollout corroboration.
Data: VAERS 2006–2024 lot events × openVAERS doses + reactogenicity-index dose imputation. Reproducible: build_ae_rates_page.py. Passive surveillance; hypothesis-generating only.