[perl4ever]

>The trolley is running over thousands of people every day, and by flipping a switch you could reroute it to another rail where only a few people would be at risk.

The mathematical issue is that a vaccine is given to everybody, so even if it has a very small rate of harm, it can be greater than the illness it's meant to prevent, if the incidence of the illness is small enough.

I'm not against vaccines in general, but they have to be incredibly safe to be worthwhile, assuming all lives are equal. Much more so than regular medication that is only given to sick people. Inherently, there has to be a higher bar.