Soon after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was put to use in America last month, reports of ‘severe adverse reactions’ appeared. People were forced to look up the term ‘anaphylaxis’ as it was all over the news. An impression formed that vaccination can be risky. And then reports from Norway, where about 30 very old and ailing Pfizer vaccine recipients died, seemed to confirm people’s worst fears. But data from the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) shows this is not true. After going over records of the first 1.9 million vaccinations done from December 14 to December 23, doctors at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided that only 21 cases could be classified as anaphylaxis – a life-threatening allergic reaction. And the occurrence of these reactions was not as random as it appears to be – most of the people who suffered them had a history of allergy.