A major portion of that typical 10 year approval process is running a clinical trial where enough people get sick to have statistically significant results. When the trials for all the EUA vaccines were run last year, COVID was extremely widespread. That dramatically shortened how long trials needed to run to prove effectiveness.

If the trials were comprehensive enough to prove both efficacy and safety, why did they not catch the AZ & JnJ blood clotting issues? One theory is that these problems primarily afflict those under 40 and this population was not adequately represented in the clinical trials.

Blood clots happen at a rate of something like 1 in 100,000 people, the trial had something like 20,000 people getting the vaccine in it. Statistically its not surprising it wasn't caught. That the risk is probably not equally distributed just furthers that.

For the trial to pick up the blood clots, it would probably have to administer the vaccine to at least half a million people if not more (and you would need other people for the placebo arm). If the size of your trial is a significant portion of a medium sized country, you are not really running a trial but just giving out a vaccine.

The trial established it works, and any safety concerns are rare enough that the risk of not just getting covid but getting covid and having severe illness or dying from covid, is higher for most people. There is no 100% garuntees in life, the best we can hope for is showing that the risk is less than the alternative.

Many of us have preexisting immunity. For that population, the marginal benefit of vaccination is zero. People should be informed about the risks.

Not really. If you are talking about pre-existing immunity from prior infection, the benefit may be less, and in fact it is recommended not to vaccinate within 6 months of infection.

If you are talking about innate immunity or cross-immunity from SARS-Cov-1 it's super rare and hasn't been shown to be relevant in most Western countries.

To see the (reduced) benefit even with prior infection just look at the numerous reports of re-infection, be it with a mutated version or otherwise, as well as the numerous reports of prior infected subjects with no or very little antibodies after a couple of months (not the full picture but still).

> People should be informed about the risks.

Show me one vaccine/medication where people were more informed than about the current Covid vaccines. We are at the point that for most folks it's riskier to drive to the vaccination appointment by car then the actual vaccination.

> it is recommended not to vaccinate within 6 months of infection.

24/7 ads and encouragement for people to get the vaccine, almost to the point that it's a moral virtue means that tons of people are getting the vaccine, even having recently caught covid-19.

You can't get the vaccine without anamnesis/checking your medical history, and one item is prior infection.

Not in the US. I got my first vaccine shot, Moderna, with no medical consultation at all. Nobody asked me if I'd gotten Covid already.

And I had never heard about this six month interval until this moment.

Interesting, could you elaborate more?

The six month interval is not a universal truth but the recommendation by the German regulator [1].

[1] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50476/do-the-co...

What would you like me to elaborate exactly?

Just interested how the vaccinations were done where you got it, small/big city, who administered it etc...

In New York City, at a large pharmacy chain, administered by a pharmacist. They're done like this, or at government run centers. The cost is handled by the government.

It's also riskier for most folks to drive a car than to catch Covid. I agree that people should look at their specific case and do honest risk/benefit analysis.

Most of what I've seen, however, feels more like herd mentality behavior based on one's political leanings. Or people feeling they genuinely don't have a choice, given impending requirements and restrictions from their local governments and employers.

Edit: not sure why I'm being downvoted. It should be common knowledge at this point that people in their 20's, 30's, and 40's have a higher risk of automobile accident, suicide, drug overdose, etc, than of covid death.

As a European I do not understand what vaccination has to do with political leaning. It's even stranger that in the US pro-life (abortion) seems to correlate with pro-choice (vaccines)?

I do understand however that society as a whole says "if you are not willing to take a negligible risk for us, we are not taking risks for you".

We are in an unfortunate state of hyper-polarization where, if one side advocates something, the other side feels compelled to reject it. Unfortunately, this has even extended into medicine. Many such cases! Sad!

I estimated that my risk from getting infected was similar to the lifetime risk of driving.

If I could get a shot that protected me from car accidents, I'd do that too.

The shot doesn't last a lifetime. You'll need two shots a year, at minimum. Third and fourth booster shots needed in the fall are already being discussed.

People are informed about the risks.

You can't know what kind of pre-existing immunity, if any, you have against covid.

Including after vaccination? If no, why is that different than infection?

No, not including after vaccination. When people speak about pre-existing immunity, it's most of the time covid deniers saying there "natural" immunity and vaccines are useless or harmful.

(Of course there is also valid discussion of pre-existing immunity, but the more nuanced messages are not as common.)

Vaccine advocates like yourself can never explain why infection doesn't imply immunity while vaccines do.

Sinovac, the Chinese vaccine, is only 50% effective. Pfizer and Moderna are much more effective. J&J is somewhere in between. This is widely accepted but no one seems to ever ask: if I was sick a month ago, where does it fall in that scale?

The point of vaccines is to give your immune system a good enough idea of the pathogen, so that your body produces antibodies. Actually contracting the disease does the same thing, unsurprisingly.

So the question is how effective is natural infection of COVID-19 at preventing future infection? Surely it's better than Sinovac, a coin flip. No? Do you have any scholarship about this I can look at?

What? Of course infection induces immunity in case of covid, about on par with mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting...

You don't have similar immunity efficacy studies for actual covid as hou have for vaccines, because infecting people on purpose would be unethical.

Note that your wording "coin flip" isn't right for Sinovac, either. 50 % efficacy is not huge but it is still beneficial on population level.