[petertodd]

> fully half the participants got a fever from the vaccine

A mild fever, with one participant getting a moderate fever. Very small sample size, so it's not clear how that compares to the Pfizer vaccine. That appears to cause severe enough fever on occasion (~0.1%) that "who pays for the rare precautionary hospitalizations?" could be a very a real issue in countries like the US without public health care. The % of temporary side effects reported is significantly more than most other vaccines.

As you say, the fevers are probably just temporary side effects of the immune response and the supermajority of people recover very quickly (~24hrs or less). But it is an issue that needs monitoring - the trials really aren't that big, so it'll take quite a bit more data to know if those vaccines are safer than covid itself for the not-at-risk population.