At this point it's not a matter of time in many cases, because it's already been shown in the data for certain demographics that the personal risk is not worth the personal benefit.

Non eradicating vaccines during a pandemic of disease with transmissibility as high as COVID are actually a terrible idea for the same reason not finishing your antibiotics is: It applies selective pressure that promotes immune escape and treatment resistance.

>By virtue of its distribution these vaccines have already been tested far more extensively than any other vaccine in history at the time of their release. If you don't trust this vaccine then you should never trust any future vaccine.

This is a new level of newspeak. Releasing without testing is testing. Slavery is freedom. War is peace.

This is a completely normal part of the approval process, simply because (phase 3) studies with a couple thousand participants will miss very rare side effects (if they exist) because, you know, statistics.

Of course you can trust a vaccine much, much, much more if it has been administered to a couple billion people as opposed to a couple thousand people, with no serious side effects being observed (or the side effects that are observed accounted for and reacted to).

You implication that this is somehow newspeak is deeply weird and irrational.

Newspeak isn't newspeak. Got it.

Long term data doesn't exist. There's no evidence the vaccines are safe long term. They also experienced greatly accelerated trial periods with data and time that would have been woefully insufficient for any other medical intervention. The data, results, and methodology for the trials is currently embroiled in scientific and ethical controversy.

To state they are "the most well tested vaccines ever" is blatant gaslighting. Widely distributed is not tested.

This is something that I see authoritarian pro-mandate people do all the time and it genuinely confuses me. Why do you do this? Do you think that testing with a billion people for a year will give you the same data as testing a hundred million people for ten years? Or is it just a genuine mistake?

I work in medical R&D and there is a long history of drugs and products with delayed failure and unintended consequences. I think the chances are low, but anyone who claims they are zero is lying.

Chronic lead poisoning, mesothelioma (cancer usually caused by abestos), lung cancer (cigarettes), various types of cancer caused by Agent Orange, and cancers caused by DDT take years-to-decades to manifest. Asking for 20 years is completely reasonable and supported by a dozen other substances that do have long-term side effects on that timescale.

> Also their timespan is almost certainly long enough that any pandemic would be long over by the time they'd trust it, essentially precluding vaccines as tool during a pandemic if everyone were to adopt their perspective.

Almost everyone that I've heard (except for a lone hardcore anti-vaxxer) who has expressed unease at the safety of the mRNA technology in general, not the specific application of it to SARS-CoV-2 - which is understandable, as there's no long-term trial data available about it. Several said that they were waiting to take the Novavax vaccine, which uses an older technology (subunit) that has been in use for decades.

So, assuming that the majority of people uneasy about taking the vaccine adopt that stance above, then no, there's no "precluding vaccines as tool during a pandemic" because the criteria is whether a particular vaccine technology has been tested for decades or not, not the particular payload.

> By virtue of its distribution these vaccines have already been tested far more extensively than any other vaccine in history at the time of their release. If you don't trust this vaccine then you should never trust any future vaccine.

Testing a vaccine with one million people for one year does not translate into ten years of study for one hundred thousand people. You cannot predict long-term effects with short-term data, and long-term effects are what these people are worried about. Nobody except hardline anti-vaxxers (who make up a tiny tiny minority of the population that I'm not discussing here) wants every single payload+technology combination to be tested for decades before use.

> Well my wife and I trusted the actual data instead of internet speculation, as well as the data showing what COVID can potentially do to fetuses, and we got pregnant well after both being fully vaccinated.

I'm reminded of a line from a sibling comment: "you get 0 applause from me if you randomly guess a “what if” correctly" - and without actual data as to whether mRNA vaccines have any long-term side effects (which is the issue under discussion), you're just guessing.

Finally, I'll preempt one of your talking points "We don't know what the long-term side effects of covid are either, yet, so why not pick the less risky of the two?" Because that is a personal choice - so it's up to the individual, not the government to impose.

It's generally a good strategy that, given ambiguous information, you still make the best use of what you have and pick the least risky option (i.e. vaccines) - however, in the specific case of vaccines in the US, the fact that the US government has shielded vaccine manufactures from legal liability means that there's significant downside in case there are long-term side effects.

If you want more people to take the vaccine, you should be campaigning hard to get that law repealed. I don't see anyone railing against anti-vaxxers doing that, so the more likely explanation is that these people are merely using the vaccine as an attempt to increase government control.

I do stand corrected. One made it to human trials. Doesn't mitigate dozens of disastrous animal trials.

That said all vaccines have side effects for some populations. There a reason why when you get your flu shot they ask you if you've had any previous bad reactions to flu shots. That doesn't make the flu shot or any vaccine a bad bet, sometimes you bet with 99% odds and end up the 1%.

if you don't want to get vaccinated, don't. no need for poorly reasoned rationalizations