The main reason vaccine trials normally take years is money. Normally you wouldn't start manufacturing a vaccine before you know it at least works in animals. You also wouldn't _simultaneously_ vaccinate the 30000 people needed for phase 3 data. The Moderna study has over 100 study locations [1]. A normal vaccine trial might have 10-20. With that number, it takes much longer to get the same number of people in the study. Given the virtually unlimited financial resources coming from the government, they were able to conduct the study, as well as begin manufacturing, in record time.
All the vaccine trials are following participants for over 2 years, at which point many of the 1-in-10000 effects should be known. If you look at previous problematic vaccines [2], most rare side effects (> 1-in-100000) were only seen after MILLIONS of innoculations, meaning you only see them in Phase 4 (post-approval) studies as they are extremely rare. Given the high case fatality rate of COVID-19 [3], the risk of an unseen extremely rare reaction is much lower than the risk of dying from COVID-19, so general speaking, you should get vaccinated.
Honest question: would you wait if there was a pact to the effect that either everyone takes the vaccine, or no one does?
Because obviously not getting vaccinated when everybody else does is almost always the best choice game-theoretically speaking; it doesn't really say anything on the vaccine (it may say more on the civic sense of the individual).
Let's see... it's a calculus of death vs potential long term adverse effect:
P(death) < 0.05% for the vast majority of the population (Age < 65) vs P(unknown) long term harm in life quality, my wild estimate: P(0.1%). It's within the same order of magnitude.
I'd take the vaccine in a heartbeat, long term effects and all, if P(death) was 10% or higher.
What is your reason for assuming P < 0.05% for long-term harm due to COVID-19? You quite clearly assumed 0.05% for death only, therefore attributing even less to long-term health effects. But so far, there appear to be many indications that COVID-19 does have significant medium (and possibly long) term consequences even in asymptomatic cases.
I fully admit that I am not up to speed in proven COVID-19 medium- or long-term effects beyond having seen headlines, but to essentially assume none when there have been very obvious and multi-faceted indications of them implies you must have a very good basis of research to base your estimate on. Care to share?
I take the IFR (infection fatality rate) for age < 65, and multiply by 10 to get a worst case of IFR+long term harm. Note that we're talking about severe long term harm - such as autoimmune disease etc. Not "it took me 3 months to recover" stories.
For example, IFR(age<65) in geneva[0] is 0.0045%. multiply by 10 to include also long term harm, you get 0.045%.
All the vaccine trials are following participants for over 2 years, at which point many of the 1-in-10000 effects should be known. If you look at previous problematic vaccines [2], most rare side effects (> 1-in-100000) were only seen after MILLIONS of innoculations, meaning you only see them in Phase 4 (post-approval) studies as they are extremely rare. Given the high case fatality rate of COVID-19 [3], the risk of an unseen extremely rare reaction is much lower than the risk of dying from COVID-19, so general speaking, you should get vaccinated.
[1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427#contactlocat...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid