A recent study (last week) came out showing after three months it starts wearing and you need to get another vaccine. You will have different people at various levels of vaccines shots (1 to 3 and by Jan you could need a fourth). What being vaccinated means based on the number of shots and where you are in the wearoff cycle makes the vac vs unvac divided not based on reality. If you had one shot got a side effect and decided not to get the next shot where does that person fit?
The two groups(Those opposed to vaccination due to potential long term effects and those in favor of vaccination immediately) cannot come to a meeting of the minds. Both sides see a potential existential threat that they're prioritizing that makes them diametrically opposed to the other point of view ("if you don't get the vaccine today you're actively spreading the plague" vs "if I get the shot, my blood will clot and I'll be sterile"). The truth is somewhere in the middle.
The whole issue with vaccination is that of threat perception. Everyone is building hypothetical models for the future based, mostly, on personal feeling and enough data points from experts to justify that feeling.
Again: There are a number of people who feel that the threat of the virus is less than the threat of the vaccine and are thus using whatever means presently available to them to justify to others why they believe that, just as there are people who feel that the virus is a greater threat than the cure.
I think that statement captures the divide. The belief that the experts have been shutdown in favour of topdown policies means trusting a select few experts who have used top down politices to shutting down discussion and threaten careers for those who do not tow the line. How do you get past that one side has total faith in the current crop of acceptable experts and the other sees them acting in favour of someone else's agenda thus has little faith in those experts.
Which is why I said that you can't bridge this gap. This is the point where "polite discourse" to try and convince people ends. There's no conversation to be had to convince someone to get the vaccine if they're in this line of thought, you can only mandate it with some sort of penalty in place for non-compliance. They are aware that there is a risk in existing unvaccinated, but they see a larger risk elsewhere in the potential side effects.
How do you convince someone something will or won't happen in the future when it represents an idea completely contrary to their worldview? I don't know, and if I did I'd be too rich to post on HN.
By the time group 2 catches up (because years have gone by of the vaccine not causing widespread problems) the threat is gone. Meanwhile the animosity has not truly been diminished because the first group will feel the second is responsible for insert issue pertaining to millions of people willingly not getting vaccinated that caused them pain/suffering.
It's almost like many people are "worried" about "long term effects" as just a smoke-screen to run out the clock on the issue...