Are you so sure? "Safe and effective" and similar slogans in other languages were repeated like almost like a mantra, especially in lower-income, immigrant areas of less-fluent English proficiency. And it took me personally meeting someone who developed Guillain-Barre syndrome after COVID vaccination to even begin to question the narrative.
I get that the HN viewership tends to be well-educated and English fluent but there are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to parse the results of a clinical trial or waiver form.
Since the risk of COVID varies wildly by demographics, this leaves open the possibility that the vaccines are a poor risk/reward tradeoff for large numbers of the people it's being recommended to (essentially, everyone over 6 months old). And since they don't prevent COVID infection, "risk of vaccination" vs "risk of a COVID infection" is the wrong comparison to make in the first place.
https://newsroom.heart.org/news/myocarditis-risk-significant...
Of course but that's not what authorities and all kinds of pro-vaccination people were saying at the time. General statements about safety don't inspire confidence. There's a possibility that the vaccines are beneficial for some groups but not others, for example.
Even today in my country they do everything possible to coerce people into vaccination. They come just short of abolishing personal freedom and consent. This is not how things are supposed to be done. People should want to take vaccines because there's data that shows benefit. Losing their trust means they won't even trust the data.
It most certainly was in the United States, starting with the initial vaccine availability notices and the information sheet you were given at the time.
This is very dishonest. Nobody is unaware that the vaccines are not perfectly safe — there’s a ton of scientific study trying to determine the exact bounds – but what’s been clear from the data and in most of the public health advice is that they’re far less dangerous than getting COVID.