VAERS is not the only scientific body in the world dedicated to studying adverse vaccine reactions, so pointing out flaws with that is not sufficient to demonstrate your case when many medical bodies who do not rely on it have come to the conclusion that the MMR vaccine is safe. I think we'd notice if literally hundreds of deaths were being posted on it every year though.
Which system is better?
The Canadian one is almost worse: still voluntary, swiss cheese of a database, and only has like a couple years of data in it. It also is explicitly not requiring of verified causal links, and encourages all reporting of anything. I believe it is also only reportable by public health officials or manufacturers, not general citizens.
The Danish are I believe implementing a mandatory vaccination reports and health records database available to researchers as of this year, I want to say? Previously was similar to the other programs and not comprehensive either
The Aussies have a system with most of the same problems as VAERS: voluntary, not verified or causally controlled, etc.
New Zealand is/has rolled out a similarly voluntary and mediocre system in the last year or two.
Almost all of these have suggested windows of time to consider that are pretty short.
So what are you referring to that's better?
"You would notice hundreds of deaths on systems like these" IF they are super obvious, like anaphylactic shock, occurring seconds or minutes right after the vaccination (although even these VAERS and other databases explicitly warn are often not reported! The CDC estimates something like a 10:1 non-reporting rate or something, I think?, even for obvious vaccine reactions).
But what about some kid who gets a vaccine then a month later starts showing very mild symptoms, deteriorates and dies of kidney failure after 6 months? Almost never would that be reported to any of the above databases. Maybe he ate some rat poison while nobody was looking, or who knows? Most doctors probably wouldn't even have vaccines enter their head as a fleeting consideration for this. Yet it might, in reality, be directly caused.
Relying on "oh we would have seen the deaths" is very presumptuously assuming that doctors are some sort of hypervigilant, superhuman pattern detectors that can notice mildly correlated trends over thousands of patients just on a hunch, in order to voluntarily report to a registry (that they don't get compensated or recognized for contributing to) that only even appears relevant when considering deep potential connections over huge spans of time.
This is why these databases are effectively useless compared to clinical trials -- In a trial, you don't have to have thought to look for some specific causal connection. You just record EVERYTHING and compare EVERYTHING to baselines, and will find things above X occurrence threshold, period, without having to have any theory or be super observant, or anything of the sort. It would catch even the most obscure, unexpected, unlikely of causal links just as easily as it will catch the ones everybody would think of.
By the by did you include the rate of maiming and hospitalization too?
No, for purposes of the thread and all of our sanity, I'm neither considering hospitalization for disease OR for vaccine reactions. This is fairly ignored on both the risk and the benefits sides of the equation. Deaths are much easier to think about and find data on for sake of argument.
And unless you have a good, solid reason to believe that the rate of death:maiming is hugely different for vaccine reactions versus disease reactions, then this is a fine simplification.