I think your criticism is somewhat valid but your issue with reporting standards really comes from two different systems doing two different things. VAERS is meant to capture any adverse event that occurs after a vaccination is given.
Here's a good thread from a Conservative doctor on how VAERS functions and why that is:
In contrast, COVID death reporting is much more complex system. Death certificates filled out by doctors are a primary source but so are coroner/ME death certificates for people who die outside of a medical facility or experienced an unexplained death. Adding to that, local and state health departments play a role by reporting into NNDSS. The CDC actually maintains "two sets of books" so to speak but only one is official. The other set is meant to more rapidly spot trends and be more up-to-date.
As the U.S. death toll nears a half-million, confusion continues over whether people die “of” COVID-19 or “with” COVID-19. Here’s what’s behind the numbers.
www.aamc.org
I definitely don't think arguments that COVID deaths are being over-counted are convincing primarily because of how scant testing was for a significant period of time and the fact that so many people die at home and coroners/MEs vary on how they test for COVID in those cases. If anything, I think a strong argument can be made that coroner/ME reporting in most areas has undercounted deaths especially during localized COVID surges.
Additionally, I think doctors really do try very hard to accurately report the cause of death of any patient they're responsible for. Unless you believe the various conspiracies about doctors and hospitals being incentivized to bump up COVID deaths, I think any argument about the accuracy of death certificates coming out of healthcare facilities has to acknowledge there's likely been both over-counting and under-counting simply because doctors are humans, COVID is a novel disease, and healthcare facilities have struggled with being overwhelmed by patients, a lack of testing, and overworked which has surely led to errors. Ultimately, I would think think any variance is largely balanced out.
I understand skepticism toward the CDC given many of their recent policy decisions but keep in mind that the scientists who collect and analyze data surrounding COVID. deaths are completely seperate personnel. There's been no substantial change in death reporting or excess death analysis between the Trump admin and the Biden admin although on the policy side we've seen major changes. I know of no reputable public health official or epidemiologist who has claimed that the death reporting system is getting it wrong. Some of those people are true data geeks and if they found a flaw you can bet they'd shout it from the rooftops.
I don't think there's any serious reason to doubt the number of reported deaths, and as the AAMC article lays out there's constant refinement and analysis to try to get to the most accurate number possible.
VAERS is meant to collect every adverse event or death that can possibly be collected and then each event is carefully analyzed. I think a similar level of scrutiny is being applied to the data collected and analyzed by VAERS and COVID death reporting even though they obviously have substantial variance in how they function and how the system are designed.
abcnews.go.com
www.cnn.com
