Analysis

What the v-safe data shows: our own write-ups, other researchers' work, and published papers.

The Preterm Babies in v-safe Came Earlier

Among v-safe users who wrote about a premature live birth, the share born before 28 weeks was about 1.8 times the pre-pandemic US share

OpenVSafe · 2026-10-29

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Cries for Help: Injury and Death Buried in V-Safe Data

A review of the v-safe free-text responses: 3,329 participants who, in their own words, reported serious harm, suicidal thoughts, near-death events, or the death of someone they loved. Free, and in the public domain.

React19 · Brownstone Institute · PDF, 3.7 MB, 1,047 pages

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Reporting on Prolonged Adverse Health Impact Among V-SAFE Enrollees

Of 9.9 million v-safe users aged 16 and over, 185,285 (1.87%) reported worse health 3 months or more after vaccination that they put down to the vaccine. Nearly half of them reported being unable to work or do normal activities, a hospital stay, or a severe event.

Retsef Levi, Nelson Lu · Research Square preprint · 25 August 2026

Read the preprint ↗

Independent analysis

Aravind Mohanoor

Aravind Mohanoor has done extensive work on v-safe. Two of his v-safe posts:

Part 2: Big Tech and the broader AI ecosystem have become a laughing stock 2026-11-01
On the topic of v-safe. Frontier LLMs do not even know what v-safe was designed for!
Understanding the v-safe data schema 2026-10-27
I have also built a new tool to help with this

All of his posts on his Substack, Vaccine Data Science →

Further analysis on his v-safe site →

Leland Lehrman

VAERS and VSAFE: The “Worst Case Scenario” Twice 2026-11-02
Brownstone Institute. How VAERS reports passed the government's “worst case” planning level during the rollout.

Nicholas Kottenstette, PhD

His technical reports on aortic aneurysms and dissections in v-safe, newest first:

V-safe Technical Report 3: Aortic Dissections After COVID-19 Vaccination PDF, 17 pages · 2026-11-01
Nick found 62 aortic dissections reported to v-safe, 60 of them in people's own words, and only 2 of the 62 reached VAERS. He compares them with expected background rates by age and sex, and finds the gap widest in people under 65.
V-safe Technical Report 2: Find the Missing Counts: Thoracic and Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms in V-safe, and How Few Reached VAERS PDF, 28 pages · 2026-10-30
Of the 337 people who described an aortic aneurysm to v-safe in their own words, only 3 had reports that reached VAERS. Includes case studies of the top 10 thoracic cases.
V-safe Technical Report 1: An Underreporting Factor (URF) of 16 PDF, 22 pages · 2026-10-11
Uses the known background rate of abdominal aortic aneurysms to estimate that v-safe caught at most about 1 in 16 cases, then applies that factor to thoracic aortic aneurysms, which are rare.

Peer-reviewed papers

Papers from 2022 on that use v-safe data, listed whatever their quality or conclusions. Most are by CDC researchers; the CDC's MMWR reports are listed separately. From PubMed, newest first.

V-safe: Summary of findings reported after COVID-19 vaccination to a US CDC active safety surveillance system through June 2023 Myers et al. · Vaccine · 2026
Trends in the administration of COVID-19 vaccines with other vaccines in the United States reported to V-safe during December 14, 2020-May 19, 2023 Parker et al. · Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics · 2024
Post-authorization safety surveillance of Ad.26.COV2.S vaccine: Reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and v-safe, February 2021-February 2022 Woo et al. · Vaccine · 2023
COVID-19 Vaccine Safety First Year Findings in Adolescents Hesse et al. · Pediatrics · 2023
The v-safe after vaccination health checker: Active vaccine safety monitoring during CDC's COVID-19 pandemic response Myers et al. · Vaccine · 2023
Association between history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe systemic adverse events after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination among U.S. adults Tompkins et al. · Vaccine · 2022
Menstrual irregularities and vaginal bleeding after COVID-19 vaccination reported to v-safe active surveillance, USA in December, 2020-January, 2022: an observational cohort study Wong et al. · The Lancet Digital Health · 2022
Safety of COVID-19 Vaccination in United States Children Ages 5 to 11 Years Hause et al. · Pediatrics · 2022
Reactogenicity of Simultaneous COVID-19 mRNA Booster and Influenza Vaccination in the US Hause et al. · JAMA Network Open · 2022
Safety of mRNA vaccines administered during the initial 6 months of the US COVID-19 vaccination programme: an observational study of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and v-safe Rosenblum et al. · The Lancet Infectious Diseases · 2022

CDC MMWR reports

MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) is the CDC's own weekly bulletin. Its reports are reviewed inside the CDC, not peer reviewed by outside experts. Aravind Mohanoor checked these v-safe reports against the v-safe data itself; each one links to his analysis.

All of Aravind's MMWR analyses, with the patterns they share →