I've got both vaccines especially early for my age group (clinical vulnerability) and I've been lobbying my vaccinated peers to at least get one dose, so apparently not.

I say "mostly confident" because we have literally zero data of effects after 3 years and can only make inferences, and it's foolish to feign knowledge you do not have to avoid being called "hesitant", but my lack of confidence does not make me hesitate to recommend the vaccine. I also lack knowledge of long term effects of COVID itself which may in fact be worse than the long term effects of any vaccine given COVID does most of what the vaccines do plus extra nasty stuff.

You are recommending something over nothing despite not being confident in the data about your recommendation?

Which vaccines were in "both vaccines?" An mRNA and J&J, or just both administrations of a two-shot mRNA vaccine?

> You are recommending something over nothing despite not being confident in the data about your recommendation?

(Not OP but) Yes. Reasoning despite uncertainty is entirely possible; if you want a mathematical formalism, look into Bayesian statistics.

I don’t think Laplace would call reasoning without data (the commenter’s avowed position) Bayesian.

Zero data of the effects after three years. Plenty of data about the effects after one. It's not “reasoning without data”; it's reasoning without as much data as one would have liked.

Are you doing this on purpose?

The commenter did not say the results of one year were under consideration. They described a state of recommendation without information. Besides, March to July isn’t even half a year for phase 3 trials.

https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04811664

I did mention inferences.

You seem to be concerned that I don't maintain a state of complete agnosticism in any matter which I lack data for, but it's really hard to do so in practice in a world of distinct choices. Most everybody will either get vaccinated or not get vaccinated and at least have made an implicit prediction about the future. Since I was pressured into making that choice it seems hardly surprising that I'm willing to opine on this issue where I lack data.

>"Is this "mostly" qualifier not the dangerous front end of misinformation and vaccine hesitancy? "

I do not understand. HN forum are places where "question everything" should be the norm, especially about science, and more especially about health when so much money is at stake.

It seems we are in a religious quest, with virtue signaling signs everywhere, to laudate the vaccine COVID-19 miracle. Everything is "magic". Somehow one could make a parallel with the state of the economy and the stock market. We are printing our way to prosperity as we are saving the world with "methode Coué" and of course brutal coercition (mandatory vaccination at state level).

What part of "you can not buy time" don't you understand ?

You may throw billions, no, trillions, quadrillons, bazillions to all the Silicon Valleys startups and brains to developp a vaccine in a matter of months ; but you can not buy a 3, 5, 10 years study with this money. You can't even buy one month or one second, you just have to wait, this is life and bio-trans-human thinking still can't and never will overcome nature, space and time.

So you might be "mostly" confident about the vaccine, I would say that this is the absolute maximum optimism best case scenario adjective you can use. Moderna, Pfizer sure are, "risk big, win big".

But we'll have to wait a few years more to completely assert something like "safe and effective" for the COVID vaccines, that is not a fact anybody can deny.