Using pandas to process vaccine-adverse events

We will be introducing pandas with a concrete bioinformatics data analysis example: we will be studying data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS, https://vaers.hhs.gov/). VAERS, which is maintained by the US Department of Health and Human Services, includes a database of vaccine-adverse events going back to 1990.

COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic, at its height in 2020-2022, took an estimated 7 million lives globally. The rapid development of COVID vaccines using messenger RiboNucleic Acid (mRNA) technology represented a technological turning point and stemmed the tide of the pandemic. In this approach, mRNA, which is the code for proteins, is introduced into our cells to teach them to make a harmless piece of the protein in the virus, triggering an immune response. In some cases, vaccines can lead to adverse events themselves, in which side effects may cause problems for some individuals. The VAERS database records such...