People can and do report what they think might be and adverse reaction. Why wouldn't you? But the good news is that the vast majority of millions of people get only the mildest reaction as expected or none at all.
Sorry Secondhand but it is true that the most vocal and well known 'spokespeople' for the anti-vaccine movement are far from rational and you don't have to look very far to find that they are against all mainstream medicine and have a very deep-seated fear and mistrust of the government or any authority and do indeed hold many conspiracy beliefs in regard to other issues. Also whilst they reject evidence based medicine and science and "big Pharma" on the one hand they are happy to embrace untested alternative treatments and all sorts of quackery including the dangerous black salve to treat their self-diagnosed cancers.
These people are not necessarily the same as concerned parents, often new parents, for whom vaccination is quite a new thing to deal with and may have a lot of questions and uncertainty but unfortunately stumble across misinformation spread by the anti-vax cult and can be quite easily misled by the untruthful claims given. Groups like the thankfully dying AVN are indeed a cult as their claims do not hold up to scrutiny at all and yet are fuelled by irrational beliefs and emotive arguments that they hold very dear. They actively and agressively censor any hint of dissent from anyone who attempts to question or refute their claims and provide scientific evidence. Many of them do not even believe that germs and viruses exist. Because they have no such relevant qualifications themselves they dismiss any scientific evidence put to them. They do not understand scientific method or even the most basic principles of methodology and statistics. Their belief is based on hearsay and unverified personal anecdote.
They despise and mistrust the entire medical fraternity worldwide yet the only doctor they hold up as their 'poster boy' is one who lied to the press and the public, misrepresented his own paper to appear that there was something there that was not found at all; was found in proceedings against him to be dishonest and unethical on several counts and was deregistered as a doctor.
VAERS reports are there for both the public and health professionals to report anything that may be a possible adverse reaction. It is an open system. You can't quote their figures because they are not medically verified. The purpose is to collate data so see if there are any unusual patterns occurring. If there are then these are investigated.
Be reminded that anecdotes and personal eyewitness alone are never scientific evidence. Things that occur at around the same time are not necessarily related at all. This can happen all the time in medicine not just vaccinations.
Funding sources for research and any possible conflicts of interest are always declared. This is quite a transparent system. Funding usually comes from many sources. I hope you don't think the taxpayer should pay for all of it that would be impossible. Vaccines are expensive to develop and research. It's up to the pharmaceutical companies to fork out most of the money especially in the early stage. There are lots of vaccine trials in the later stages especially followup trials, that are funded by all kinds of independent bodies such as universities and consortiums.
