I actually think OC made a valid point - that is, there is an extremely small chance this vaccination causes long term effects, and therefore, if every individual were to act independetly according to their own self-interest, they would avoid the vaccine. This is true for all vaccines, and reminds me of the tragedy of the commons.
I'm actually curious, though, why the OC wants to discuss this. There is truth to his comment, but if you aren't willing to be a team player, there's no good in recruiting others to your way of thinking.
If you do catch it, the risks of long-term disability are pretty high too. We don't know a lot about long COVID, but the known numbers on long COVID there are concerning.
1) Vaccines are 95% effective.
2) We didn't see any side effects in 30k person studies.
It's hard to run numbers where the "extremely small chance this vaccination causes long term effects" are greater than p(catching COVID) * p(long COVID).
There was a tragedy of the commons when there were a few dozens confirmed cases of COVID. There was virtually no individual risk to going out and partying, and if everyone did that, it would double in 5 days. Everyone went out and parties until the personal risks were high, and the collective costs of those decisions were huge.
In this case, though, we're comparing the risks of an engineered and rigorously tested vaccine against those of a relatively poorly understood new virus. I can't work any sensible numbers where it doesn't make sense to take the vaccine from that argument.
The only place where I could run reasonable numbers for a reason to wait is:
1) If you can afford to 100% quarantine at home
2) You want to pick between vaccines, waiting for a better one
The rapid growth of racism in blue states comes back to this attitude. If people can't speak freely, when they have false beliefs, they keep them to themselves, and you can't address them. The sorts of blue state beliefs about minorities are just wacko at this point.
People should be free to speak.
No, I don't agree with OP, but this whole "why talk about it?" thing is an issue. You talk about things together, critically to come to a common understanding of the truth. That has a lot of value in itself. It's not all about impact of words, and how you can politick the change you want in the world. Society works better when people speak openly, even when those words are false and harmful, and when people can be confronted on that, not with cancel culture, but critically, logically, and civilly.
We've worked ourselves into a corner where we can't do that anymore.