Monitoring COVID-19 vaccine safety means sorting signal from noise
Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images With the launch of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, officials expect to see a surge in the number of potential bad vaccine reactions. Their job will be to find out how real those reactions are - finding a signal in the noise.
If previous vaccine reports are a guide, the vast majority of the reports won't end up being real safety issues. But federal officials encourage physicians, especially those who don't usually give vaccines, to tell the programs about any hint of an issue - because they want to make sure they know about and thoroughly investigate everything.
To some degree, the problem has to do with large numbers and the relative novelty of the vaccine. The COVID-19 vaccines are also under intense scrutiny, and both recipients...