Everyone understands the reasoning behind it. The reason lots of people view it as surprising and stupid is that it implicitly assumes (a) no mistakes are made that would then be propagated, (b) that you also don't accumulate unsafety by doing a chain of relative comparisons and (c) there are no downsides from playing word games with people.

None of these assumptions is sound. The assurance people want from the medical system isn't "taking this is only slightly less safe than taking that", it's "taking this is safe relative to doing nothing", because doing nothing is the default state.

> All because "most people assume vaccines are tested against an inert placebo" instead of educating themselves on statistics and the history of medical testing.

The FDA itself defines a placebo as an inert substance and tells people vaccines are tested against placebos, even though they aren't by their own definitions. They don't get to play games like that and then tell people they should have "done their own research" to catch them in the act.