Really? We've got a lot more data on COVID than we do on the vaccines.
Sure, but we don't know much about long-term morbidity tied to COVID infection, or exactly how many people it will get in the end. Even if I've got it all wrong--- the vaccine is riskier than our current data implies in the age 24-30 group, and fewer people from age 24-30 will get it because things burnt themselves out earlier-- what about the risks of long-term morbidity from COVID-19 infection in this group? Even that alone dwarfs likely vaccine risks. A whole lot of people are getting hospitalized, and even only 5% of them ending up with some degree of long term disability is daunting.
There's big error bars all around, but they largely don't overlap, and COVID has profound downside risks.
I would say the same about the vaccines though. It seems like a lose/lose but one of which has a much greater sample.
Basically never: negative effects are overwhelmingly weighted to close to administration. This could, of course, always be the first vaccine to really do this. Indeed, most childhood vaccine trials have been about a year long.
Much more interesting / troublesome is what immunogenicity is at 1 years / 3 years / 5 years. That's why vaccines have failed at the end of their trials: efficacy isn't durable enough, not that too many people get side effects 2.5 years in.
There's a fair chance we'll find that these vaccines don't offer great long term protection. So far protection seems to be holding up OK... But that's next year's problem.
> Had that judgement call not been made in one of the least competent governments in US history, I think it might carry more weight, no?
We have plenty of other competent regulators making the same choice, and the review process followed seems reasonable. The pressure from the top to speed it up further is yucky, I admit.
> I would challenge this statement in that I don't believe it possible to fully understand the risks yet.
Well, sure. We can't know exactly the probability that it will turn us all into vampires a year from now. We can't exactly know the risks from letting COVID-19 doing its thing unimpeded, either. But the former risk looks pretty small and the latter risk looks pretty big, and it's not like we've not studied both pretty extensively.