So, clearly you're just making a nitpicky point about whether we can say there are "no side effects" and ignoring context. But the context here is a vaccine against a very dangerous disease, and the need to make a risk analysis decision as to whether to use it.

Broadly: you seem to be implying that you think a ~0.5% fatality rate just "takes a long time to develop". Even if you posit 100% infections in the US (laughably wrong given the trajectory of outbreak, but whatever), you have to accept an IFR almost 0.2%.

Given the ~170M Americans already vaccinated, any side effect worth discussing would need to be at least as bad as killing 334000 of them. And needless no vaccine in history, maybe no widely prescribed drug of any kind, has turned up a long tail side effect analysis like that. Remember when everyone lost their shit about Vioxx? Best estimates are that 38k people died; an order of magnitude lower.

> against a very dangerous disease

Ebola or smallpox are very dangerous disease. COVID has much lower negative impact on lives/health, it is more like flu or risk of stroke, very dangerous only for specific subpopulations, mostly old / unhealthy people with preexisting conditions.

Ebola spreads poorly and never achieved anything larger than a regional outbreak (but yes, it's very dangerous). Smallpox is extinct.

Covid is a pandemic, literally killing millions of people. You don't think that's relevant to a discussion about vaccination policy?

BTW: that "smallpox" idea you threw out? Give you two guesses as to how it was eradicated.

You said it is very dangerous, but I say it is not in that category. It is very dangerous to specific subpopulations, that's it.

It is "very dangerous" in that it's killing millions of people and will probably kill millions more if we don't get people to take their vaccines. Better?

Again, imagine if people successfully deployed your logic against the smallpox vaccine. We'd still be getting sick with smallpox.

Yes that's slightly better. However millions may still die even with vaccinations, because most of the world does not have access to them and they don't have adequate health care. Also, with time as mutations occur, vaccines will get less efficient.

You got confused with the smallpox. I mentioned smallpox as an example of what COVID isn't. Not every disease warrants mass vaccination, and this depends also on efficacy of the vaccine.

COVID may warrant it for specific subpopulations. But we don't have good enough vaccines yet to eradicate COVID. "Getting rid of COVID via vaccines", "vaccines is the only way" is just fantasy/propaganda tactic to increase vaccinations.

“Unhealthy people” is a very large group. For example, obesity is considered an unhealthy state. 42.5% of the US population is obese.

If obesity is a contributing problem, I wonder if there could be a non-vaccine solution to obesity? Hmm, maybe it has something to do with the quantity and type of calories consumed.

People are free to eat themselves into metabolic destruction just as people are free to partake or not partake in the emergency use authorization vaccine experiments.

People are free to partake or not partake… no one is forcing people to get vaccinated, there is always an alternative. A restaurant is requiring patrons to be vaccinated? Don’t go there if you are not. Your job is requiring prove of vaccination? Quit the job.

Yes technically you are correct, but COVID does not care about technical definition of obesity. Obese is a very general term, borderline obese/overweight person with otherwise healthy body has much better chances than someone with morbid obesity or diabetes or heart/vascular condition.

Sure, I agree that obesity is not a great indicator. I just used it to illustrate that an unhealthy population can be very large. Another example: 6.5% of Americans are morbidly obese, which I would guess can have an effect on the severity of Covid symptoms. That’s already 20 million people. And that’s just one factor. How many people have heart problems, lung problems, etc?

Yes, it's still a big part of the population. I think getting vaccinated makes a lot of sense in that group, but of course even there, it has to be informed personal decision.

The long lasting side effects of Covid are just as if not more underresearched than the vaccines.

They are not underresearched, they are unknown because the long term has to pass first and then it can be researched.

Smoking cigarettes is harmless.... nobody gets sick after smoking for a year

thalidomide is harmless... "On October 1, 1957, the company launched thalidomide and began marketing it under the trade name Contergan. It was proclaimed a "wonder drug" for insomnia, coughs, colds and headaches... In late 1959, it was noticed that peripheral neuritis developed in patients who took the drug over a period of time, and it was only after this point that thalidomide ceased to be provided over the counter. ...Despite the side effects, thalidomide was sold in pharmacies in Canada until 1962." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide]

the industry doesn't turn on a dime due to adverse effects when there is money to be made

You can always make a "you never know, something completely unforeseen may happe", and you will be right.

Of course, people tend to only make those arguments for things they don't really want to be done.

Not really. This has been the argument against pesticides and GMO foods for years, and it’s completely valid in hindsight.

GMO is a good example why such concerns are not always right. (See also: cell phone radiation.)

Are pesticides and GMO foods - two things which are reapplied on a frequent basis, relatively speaking - actually comparable to an instance in time where someone received one or two shots once? I think the most famous/deadly instances of drugs having side effects which discovered after mass deployment have generally been for medicines one ingests continuously, no?

I, as an untrained and uneducated individual, find it almost impossible to imagine a drug / technology / mechanism which could be applied "once" (i.e. only one time, even if over a few doses spaced out in time) that would not present any population effects after 1y / 1billion people that would then proceed to be even within one order of magnitude as deadly as COVID. Hell, two or three even...

1) Prions: kuru has asymptomatic incubation period 10-13 years; 2) various carcinogens, it takes time for the cancer to develop.

Prions are an obvious exception, but I don't think I agree with carcinogens. Perhaps I'm unaware. Can you point to any carcinogen which a single exposure to would result in a >0.05% death rate in the exposed population?

I don't think people who really wanted pesticides and GMO foods made those arguments.

True but the same goes for covid itself. In fact we already know of long covid. Which we still don't know much about. We don't even know if it ever goes away. So there's a known long-term effect already.

The vaccines are a lot better understood than the virus. We don't know of any long-term issues so far.

It's still a much safer bet to get the vaccine IMO. And it will also help with the societal problem around the covid measures. We can't keep going on lockdowns for years to come. It will destroy the economy which has its own associated health risks.

These vaccines are not going to solve societal problems; they do not prevent spreading, and efficiency decreases as the virus mutates. COVID measures will stop when critical body of people finally realizes they are inefficient/too costly and not necessary.

Most vaccine side effects do take a long time to develop, and as a result are concluded to be plain ol’ “bad luck” health problems