What are your views on the Gardasil Panic?

Some Gardasil recipients claim to have experienced extremely adverse side effects as a result of the vaccine.

Myspace bulletins with personal stories (such as this one) have been circulating and generating hundreds of comments in a matter of hours. This article also provides information regarding the panic.

What should an intelligent observer really take away from this?

Wikipedia says the following:

Of the 23 million doses of Gardasil administered to girls and women up to December 31, 2008, 11,916 adverse events were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS): 94% of these events have been classified as non-serious with the remaining 6% classified as serious. Gardasil has less than half the average percentage of serious reports. These are anecdotal reports, and “it is important to note that a report to VAERS does not mean there is a connection between the vaccine and the event. It means the event took place following vaccination.” The FDA and CDC said that with millions of vaccinations “by chance alone some serious adverse effects and deaths” will occur in the time period following vaccination, but have nothing to do with the vaccine. Although at least 20 women who received the Gardasil vaccine have died, there is no evidence that deaths or serious outcomes were connected to the shot. Where information was available, the cause of death was explained by other factors. Likewise, although a small number of cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) have been reported following vaccination with Gardasil, there is no evidence linking GBS to the vaccine.

Here is what the CDC has to say about it. I checked out this source, as it was the one referenced in Wikipedia for the statement, “Gardasil has less than half the average percentage of serious reports.” Apparently, the “6% of adverse events” is the part that is half the average percentage of serious reports for a vaccine, but the CDC says nothing about the typicality the ratio of adverse reports to number of doses administered. This ratio could, however, be very typical. (I am about to run into work and have not had the time to research this yet.)

I am most interested in answers to the following questions:

1. As logical consumers of this information, what are we to take away from it? Is this truly cause for a panic, or is this another example of uninformed people stirring up a fuss about something of which they know nothing?

2. How compelling and statistically powerful do correlations between a possible agent and a response need to be before they are a cause for concern?

3. In the personal anecdote, what should we infer (if anything) from the fact that no Western doctor was willing to admit the possibility of a link between the vaccine and her illness, but Eastern doctors did acknowledge the possibility?

[I don’t mean this to sound harsh, but if you do have a personal story about an adverse side effect to Gardasil, I do request that you do not post the story in this particular thread. If many of you have stories, it’s quite possible that a separate thread would be an appropriate forum for sharing them. However, there are already several examples of various personal stories in the information I have provided above, and there is a lot to discuss about how we should construe this information. I would prefer this thread to remain on topic about how one should logically and rationally interpret information presented on something like the Gardasil Panic. Thank you!]