About This Project
CommitteeComments.com makes public comments submitted to federal advisory committee dockets on regulations.gov accessible, searchable, and analyzable for researchers, journalists, advocates, and the general public.
The initial focus is docket CDC-2026-0199, related to ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) and VRBPAC (Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee).
A key design goal is to surface patient stories — comments from people who were personally injured, or whose family member or friend was injured or died following vaccination.
Data Source
All comments are fetched directly from the regulations.gov API using an automated pipeline. Comment text, metadata, and attachment URLs are preserved exactly as submitted. No comments are excluded or modified.
Perspective Analysis
Each comment is analyzed using the Claude AI API to classify it along several dimensions. We use the term "perspective" rather than "sentiment" because commenters — particularly those describing vaccine injuries — are expressing informed perspectives grounded in personal experience, not merely emotional sentiment.
Perspective Labels
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pro-vaccine | Clearly and broadly supportive of vaccines |
| Nuanced mostly pro | Generally supportive but raises some concerns |
| Uncertain | Ambiguous or balanced |
| Vaccine-hesitant | Raising safety concerns, calling for more transparency, or skeptical of vaccine policy |
| Anti-vaccine | Clearly and broadly opposed to vaccines |
Many commenters who experienced vaccine injuries do not consider themselves "anti-vaccine." They may be pro-safety or pro-transparency. These commenters are classified as "vaccine-hesitant" unless their comment is clearly and broadly opposed to all vaccines.
Vaccine Injured Flag
The Vaccine Injured flag is independent of perspective. It is set when a commenter describes a personal experience of injury affecting themselves, or injury or death affecting a family member or friend, following vaccination. It is not set when a commenter merely acknowledges that rare adverse events exist as part of a broader policy argument with no personal connection.
Tags
Tags describe what each comment is about — neutrally and descriptively. Tags are not used to editorialize or dismiss any commenter's perspective. Vaccine injury is treated as a legitimate concern, not misinformation.
Other Analysis Fields
- Vaccines mentioned — specific vaccines or vaccine types referenced in the comment
- References — flagged if the comment contains citations, links, or references to studies or research
- Duplicate — flagged if the comment appears to be a form letter or near-identical to other submissions
Limitations
The perspective analysis is automated and imperfect. Individual classifications may not capture the full nuance of a commenter's views. The analysis is provided as a starting point for exploration, not as a definitive categorization.
The "duplicate" flag uses a single-pass heuristic — it can identify obvious form-letter language but may miss near-duplicates that use different wording.
Open Source
This project is open source. The code, data pipeline, and analysis scripts are available on GitHub.