The chart titled "VAERS Drops File Sizes Over Time" elegantly illustrates the evolution of VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) data drops, measured in millions of bytes, spanning from 2007 to April of 2025. Initially, the data size remained relatively stable, oscillating between 400 and 700 million bytes from 2016 through early 2021. A marked exponential surge commenced in mid-2021, aligning with the widespread rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations, culminating in a peak exceeding 3,500 million bytes around October 2021. Subsequently, a precipitous decline occurred in November 2022, followed by a gradual stabilization at approximately 2,200 to 2,500 million bytes through early 2025 [1].

This dramatic shift is elucidated by Gary Hawkins in his article on DeepDots, where he details a significant data purge executed by the CDC on November 11, 2022. Hawkins reports the removal of approximately 1.039 GB of data, comprising 479,119 reports with blanked fields—exclusively pertaining to COVID-19 vaccines—and an additional 2,433 reports deleted in their entirety [1]. This purge accounts for the abrupt drop observed in the chart, reflecting a deliberate reduction in data volume post-peak. The accompanying dataset, "drop_sizes.csv," corroborates this trajectory, highlighting a consistent upward trend until the purge, followed by a notable leveling off.

[1]: Hawkins, G. (2022). Undeleting a Gigabyte of Data Purged on Nov 11, 2022 by the CDC. DeepDots. Retrieved from https://deepdots.substack.com/p/undeleting-a-gigabyte-of-data-purged