Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry, if I ever said my FDA approved drug was "safe and effective" I'd have the FDA dropping the hammer on me.

The FDA does not prove a drug is safe. No drug is 100% safe. The FDA determines whether the risks of the treatment are outweighed by the benefit.

I have no doubt that additional safety signals will pop up from Covid vaccines as the treated population expands by 100x. Most likely they will not be severe and the risk will still outweight the benefit.

But to say "we've tested the vaccine on a 15,000 people so we know it's safe to vaccinate 1B+ people" is not something the FDA would agree with.

To me a chainsaw is a safe tool to use. Dangerous, but safe. To others it is not. Is a chainsaw a "safe" tool?

And the FDA itself talks about approved drugs being safe and effective: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/fdas-dr...

The FDA is incredibly strict when it comes to advertising. I remember reading about one violation where the ad had a tagline for an ADHD medication "So you can concentrate on the important things" and showed a picture of a child studying. The FDA said "the image implies that your medication will improve the ability of a child to study and you have submitted no data to the FDA to support this claim".

Happens extremely rarely though.

No drug is safe, but in this case, not taking a drug is not safe. If it's safe enough to vaccinate 15,000 people, when 300 of them are expected to die without vaccination, it's incredibly unlikely that side effects discovered on 1 billion people will not make the vaccine the safe choice.

I find this ridiculous considering the massive challenge we have ahead of us just to get the vaccine to the millions of people who desperately want it.

Sure, if we get to the point where everyone who wants the vaccine has had it, and there are still people dying from COVID, then we can discuss illiberal measures to increase vaccine take-up. (I'd still be opposed to them).

Getting worked up about this stuff when not a single person (outside of the trial groups) has been vaccinated yet just demonstrates our politicians' (on all sides) tendency towards authoritarianism.

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-11-10/covid-vaccine-will-enoug...

...to no longer be a threat to an unvaccinated person.

This isn't like the childhood vaccines, where we need herd immunity to protect the children who are too young to be vaccinated.

Provided that everyone who wants the vaccine can get it, I don't see the problem with letting everyone else make their own decision.

The current priority list of people is nowhere near 70% of the population anyway. Most people under 50 won't have the opportunity to be vaccinated for months. So this absolutely is a theoretical problem, at least for now.

Given that Covid is such a mild disease for most young people, I predict that by the time the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated, this will be a non-issue anyway.

This whole thing becomes moot once the vulnerable are vaccinated, no need for creepy immunity passports.

It wasn't healing and it turned out he had an undetected issue processing folic acid I believe, which has an effect on how your body heals from neurological damage. He's recovering now after 3 months but has to take folic acid and other supplements 5 times a day.

Other friends have had persistent diminished lung capacity for months on end; these are folks who had no co-morbidities and in their 20s.

However, through my partner I am friends with many classical singers. They are absolutely worried about damaging their instrument.

It's not only too young children who might not be legitimately unvaccinated...some people who are immunocompromised or otherwise medically unable to take certain vaccines must also rely on herd immunity for protection.

https://immunizebc.ca/sites/default/files/graphics/vaccine-s...

Pandemics have, since time immemorial, been an exception to the "I can do what I want" rule.

Much like allowing parents to fall into conspiracy theory traps and refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated against measles, resulting in that disease suddenly becoming a threat again, if we're going to get back to normalcy we can't let half the population ignore the vaccine.

But, since we are going to let half the population ignore the vaccine, prepare for a long, drawn-out period of time during which the disease will flare up, lockdowns will be imposed, more people will needlessly die, and conspiracy theories will continue to make a mockery of civilization.

People who do take the vaccine are likely still able to spread the virus.

The pandemic is not going to go quietly any time soon.

Restricting social interaction and business is a crushing approach to solving the problem, with severe consequences to health and economics. It's brute force, like securing a computer using an air gap. The only reason lockdowns have been used in 2020 is because we have no other options available, but a free and readily-available vaccine changes the calculus.