[bamboozled]

I've had many vaccines before, I'm not opposed to vaccines. I'm opposed to this particular vaccines because:

* There are reports of dangerous side effects after taking it.

* It's a new vaccine and the effects of the spike proteins it forces your body to produce have been found in places we were told they wouldn't be found.

* No long term studies have been done, even though lipids from the vaccine have been found in reproductive tissues (we don't know what this means yet).

* The vaccine is still only under emergency use authorization.

* I'm not in a high risk category, high risk people should be vaccinated if they're the ones primarily at risk?

* People are being pressured and coerced into taking it even though they are scared to do so. This is wrong, people should feel comfortable to take it, not as if it's their duty to mankind to protect elderly people (who could just take the vaccine).

[OzyM]

All the major side effects I've heard of have been very small in scope, i.e. the chance of a healthy person developing one of the dangerous side effects is extremely small, and certainly orders of magnitude smaller than their chance of proportionally damaging side-effects from the disease itself. As every vaccine currently developed has a small side-effect risk, this seems reasonable, unless you have a major piece of data I'm missing.

As far as I can tell, any variables about the vaccines seem extremely safe compared to the unknown variables incurred by those with symptomatic infections.

I agree that people in high risk categories who can be vaccinated should do so. However, the vaccine is only mostly effective, not 100% effective, so to some extent their health is still influenced by the health of those around them.

As far as social pressure, pushing (but not forcing) people toward decisions that benefit everyone seems like the entire point of social pressure. People should be given all of the relevant information and should be free to make their own medical decisions. However, there should be some expectation that one tries not to spread deadly diseases to vulnerable populations, and schools / businesses / etc. should absolutely feel free to require vaccination (of those capable of being vaccinated).

But re: your other comment about wearing a mask, if you're one of the rare people who won't be vaccinated but still keep your mask on in all public places, wash your hands frequently, and stay 6 feet apart from everyone not in your household, you not getting vaccinated isn't a major concern. But the people who use these justifications (disclaimer: anecdata) aren't usually taking those precautions.