It takes extreme stoicism for "Data is not the plural of Anecdote" to be a comfort.

An analysis of that aphorism here: Don't forget: The plural of anecdote is data

You may have heard the phrase the plural of anecdote is not data. It turns out that this is a misquote. The original aphorism, by the political scientist Ray Wolfinger, was just the opposite: The plural of anecdote is data.

Wolfinger’s formulation makes sense: Data does not have a virgin birth. It comes to us from somewhere. Someone set up a procedure to collect and record it. Sometimes this person is a scientist, but she also could be a journalist.

The comments are interesting, showing why that kind of remark isn't helpful. It does illustrate how information is mangled in this day and age—picking and choosing data points and turning them into anecdote masquerading as data.

Who can say how many robustly-successful medical treatments have a fraction of bad results, it goes with the territory; so while the lion's share of the work is beneficial, sometimes it isn't. Throwing out the good because of the anomalies (rather than working to understand and detect anomalous cases prior to treatment) is exactly what the vaccine deniers are doing. Since vaccines are (were) almost universal compared to all other more specialized medical treatments, there is a huge pool of recipients or possible beneficiaries to influence.