Going to suggest that rather than mudslinging, you do the work of looking at VAERS [1] yourself
Alternatively, you could use VAERSanalysis [2], or Openvaers [3]
In this spirit of openness, here is also an NPR article [4] on VAERS data quality/verification issues, and how the data may not be considered high quality, that anti-vaxxers use it to spread disinformation. I'm adding that specifically because it is the contrary opinion about the quality of the data and I believe in an open debate. I am not an anti-vaxxer, being up on all my vaccines, and then some due to overseas work, along with one experimental vaccine, but not covid vaccinated yet.
The main point is "legitimate source for what?". A reporting system like VAERS errs widely on the side of overreporting and explicitly doesn't require any causality, so that its data can be mined for surprising patterns to investigate that might uncover a causal link we didn't know about.
Any "There's X VAERS reports of the vaccine causing Y" claims thus heavily misuse the data source, because that's not what it is capturing.
There is spurious data in VAERS, but the CDC has methods in place to filter those out in their research into adverse cardiac effects. Their numbers are in no way exaggerated.
... yes, as I said, the purpose is to inform further research based on it, because the reports showed a suspicious pattern. How is that relevant to the thread here with the "the vaccine killed 15000 people, because there is 15000 reports in VAERS" claim?
Alternatively, you could use VAERSanalysis [2], or Openvaers [3]
In this spirit of openness, here is also an NPR article [4] on VAERS data quality/verification issues, and how the data may not be considered high quality, that anti-vaxxers use it to spread disinformation. I'm adding that specifically because it is the contrary opinion about the quality of the data and I believe in an open debate. I am not an anti-vaxxer, being up on all my vaccines, and then some due to overseas work, along with one experimental vaccine, but not covid vaccinated yet.
[1] https://vaers.hhs.gov/
[2] https://vaersanalysis.info/2021/09/10/vaers-summary-for-covi...
[3] https://openvaers.com/covid-data
[4] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/06/14/1004757...