Asbestos fire-proofing made a substantial difference. We did not - in fact - go from "Let's make things fire-proof with asbestos" to "Eh, asbestos is bad, guess everything will burn down instead" but instead moved to fire-proofing with new materials in countries that could afford to do that.

Lots of older buildings have asbestos that's preventing fires and won't cause noticeable harm so long as it's undisturbed. The fibres are a problem, but a sheet of material under a layer of plaster isn't breaking off fibres that can get into your lungs. If your job is to rip out plaster and re-model buildings then that's a huge problem, but if you just live in a building you're getting much more benefit from it not catching fire than you'd get from very minutely reducing your risk of lung damage from asbestos.

In fact even for a brand new building, although it's banned in some places, "Let's use asbestos" makes more sense than "Eh, so what if it burns down and a few dozen people die", so if those are the available choices you should go with asbestos.

So it is with the available COVID-19 vaccines. SARS-CoV-2 is very dangerous and, outside of New Zealand and a handful of Pacific islands, widespread, so you're just way more likely to get very sick or die as a result of not being vaccinated than suffer a serious side effect, known or hypothetical.

I am required to wear (chemical-infused) flame retardant clothing on oil and gas wells. Some people have to work despite the chemicals rubbing their skin all day.