The vaccine is not the virus? If you are under 60 without serious health issues COVID is indeed no worse than a bad flu for the vast majority of people. Certainly not a guaranteed death sentence, let alone guaranteed hospitalization. Especially if treated as soon as detected instead of letting people sit around and get worse until they have to be hospitalized.

https://aapsonline.org/covidpatientguide/

okay, i get that mRNA vaccines are not introducing weakened versions of the actual virus like a conventional vaccine, but what explains the sometimes severe side effects people receive? those symptoms aren't related to covid at all, and there's zero relation between how one reacts to the vaccine and how one would react to covid?

i understand things are very politicized now, so to be clear, genuine interest. i thought there was some relation just based on how regular vaccines operate.

While I don't know the connection between the two, we also need to be realistic and not expect everyone to read 50 papers and be a disease and vaccination expert.

Honestly, I don't know, but it's interesting that when I say I had very bad side effects to the vaccine, some people are convinced that it is because I would also react to covid similarly.

Will those people say to a 70 years old obese smoker who didn't get any reaction after the vaccine? I know many like that. Should I tell them "oh you didn't get a severe reaction to the vaccine, so I guess that's how you would react to covid, too"? Of course not, it's nonsense.

One of the more common causes of vaccine related injury is allergic reaction to one or more of the adjuvant or carriers, rather than to the antigenic load.

i see. some people get really severe reactions though, like the people here talking about a week long; does that explain those cases? is there no relation b/w vaccine reaction and reaction to the actual virus?

Well, I personally had a >2 week long reaction, and after the second shot, was informed that yes, it probably was some sort of allergic reaction. What was it? We still don't know

Regarding correlations between the two, it's a bit difficult to tell. After all, you can't really get a correlation between the intensity of vaccine reaction and actual virus exposure for... obvious reasons.

However, (I'm a bit rusty on my allergy and autoimmunity, so if someone catches a mistake, please call me out on it) allergic reactions and the viral reactions tend to present themselves differently. The common image of swelling and inability to breathe are almost completely associated with allergy, while the fever, tiredness and so on tend to be more standard.