People may misinterpret VAERS, which is easily searchable, as a catalog of actual side effects, rather than possible or suspected ones. And it’s easy to pull data out of context. “For those who are out to scare, there’s a lot of material there,” says Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Take Carlson’s fearful numbers. The Fox News host did not mention the reports are not vetted, nor that among the approximately 4000 deaths after COVID-19 vaccination reported to VAERS at the time of his broadcast, nearly 80% were in people 60 and older, whose mortality from all causes is substantially higher than in younger people. “A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines,” as CDC puts it on its website. To counter misinterpretation of its data, the VAERS website prominently notes the reports do not imply causality and that any event could have happened by coincidence. The number of deaths reported after a COVID-19 vaccination as of 24 May—4863—represents just 0.0017% of more than 285 million doses of vaccine given, the agency notes in a continuously updated statement. But experts who track vaccine misinformation worry the imprimatur of VAERS gives misleading claims a sheen of credibility.