Because no one knows what potential problems people may face in 1, 2,5,10,15,20, to years after being sick with Covid. Think of elevated risk of cancers, stokes, and other maladies.

From Mayo clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...

Before we get this thing under control, in US we will at current rate expose almost 10% of population to COVID-19 (now at some 11M people[1]). We should really pray that long term effects are negligible because otherwise we have non-insignificant part of population that are partially damaged and further hinder US in the global competition against China and others.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

You seem to misunderstand the point I was trying to make. That same argument can be brought up against potential problems of a vaccine which is based on a novel technology and has not been tested for 1,2,5,10,15,20 years.

We understand that covid is causing scarring on the lungs heart and kidneys and other organs, in some cases. This would reduce function of those organs, and that reduction may not impact people until they are older. That's why it's too soon to declare it for covid in any individual case. Vaccines work differently, if they caused such scarring for example, it would be accompanied by a bunch of other symptoms which would have been spotted and tested. As a result you can't point to something like I have for covid and make the same argument. Yet, we do understand the vaccine protects us from covid, so we can make an argument about it being a net positive overall.

I don’t think the parent has said that, though.

All they’ve said is we shouldn’t draw conclusions yet about long-term COVID damage. No mention of vaccines.

Because long-term effects require a long term to show up, and the vaccine was created using a very well-understood technique for which that type of data is available.

Are you sure about that? AFAIK both Moderna and Pfitzer vaccines are novel mRNA vaccines, of which (according to Wikipedia) none have been yet approved for human use.

Because we can extrapolate from our scientific understanding of both?

We know fairly well what damage covid-19 does to the body, and we know fairly well what other similar Corona viruses have done.

Similarly we know the qualities of these vaccines and the likelihood of their success and failure rates.

The vaccine isn't created by pure chance. It's a result of an iterative scientific process.

Long term lung damage is indicated at least among those who have had severe symptoms and suffering. I never said anything about the efficacy or the safety of the vaccines in my comment. I personally think that these preliminary results from these trials are also not completely reliable. While we should all be thankful for the results, the current announcements aren’t the end of the story. Even when they get to further trials, we wouldn’t have had enough time and enough broad range tests to conclusively state certain things (and the unfortunate fact is that we don’t have the luxury of time).

If you look at what the experts say, you’d find them being cautious with their words when commenting on vaccines, efficacy, etc. It’s in people’s best interests to follow precautions like wearing masks, washing hands with soap and maintaining some distance from other people, regardless of what news comes on the vaccine front.

Technically correct, but "long term" means a few months at most in this case.