I've had a few days to process, because her last few days on life support..... well, when I saw her, I could just sense that "she" was no longer present.... and the EEGs showed the decline in brain activity. Point is I was mourning her days ago, when her body was still alive. Anyways, a doctor pulled me aside and broke it down for me this way:

The vaccine is our weapon in a war against the virus, and my mother-in-law is a "friendly fire" casualty. They are inevitable, but the war must be fought.

While this kind of helps me feel a bit better, it's been disturbing to my wife and her family...... there has certainly been a rather strong tendency amongst the medical staff to try to attribute the causality to a multitude of other factors. They did this almost immediately. The tests, after days, showed an unusually healthy heart, and left them stumped. Only then did they even begin to discuss the vaccine. I understand why, it's just that the initial 4 days or so of behavior, and refusal to engage in any convo on the vaccine, made them suspicious.

They are Filipino-Americans, and have about as much trust in authority as my West Virginian relatives do, which is basically zero. This made things 20x worse. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to convince my wife to get vaccinated now. She had COVID in February when I did (both of us extremely mild symptoms) and she is currently saying she won't get the vaccine, even if that means cancelling our planned overseas trip.

Anyway, I just got an impression that there is some hesitancy, likely institutional, to not talk about it..... Which makes sense, seeing as how this manifests with famous friendly fire incidents in the military.

Edit:

I forgot to thank you for pointing out the HHS program, but I've been told that the program is extremely high burden of proof (my MIL was on machines for over a week, so any autopsy is garbage at this point). I've heard that in 10 years, they've handed out benefits to approximately 30 people. I hope I'm misinformed on this.