[svara]

I think GP made a good argument, if you state it in somewhat more friendly words.

The world is different now from 2019; history has forced on us the unfortunate choice between the vaccine and the novel Coronavirus. The idea that the vaccine might have unknown, rare, long-term side-effects isn't nonsensical per se; but you have to weigh the probability of that against the certainty of you and / or your loved ones getting the virus if you're not vaccinated.

What we definitely know so far is that such weird "dark horse" side-effects that only appear long after the actual studies are a very rare phenomenon for vaccines in general, there is no biological reason for why they should appear in this case, and none have been observed so far, even though the first people got these vaccines a year or so ago.

Probably the underlying problem is a general fear of vaccines or pharmaceuticals in general. Side-effects in general occupy a way too large space in people's imagination. It might help to consider the dangers inherent to common everyday activities to keep things in perspective.

[rory]

> weigh the probability of that against the certainty of you and / or your loved ones getting the virus if you're not vaccinated

Why do you say that's a certainty? I think it's still very uncertain how many people the virus will infect going forward.

[svara]

It is certain. Even if the vaccines always led to sterilizing immunity (they don't) and immunity lasted forever (it doesn't), we're not reaching sufficient fractions of vaccinated people literally anywhere in the world for the virus to go extinct locally - the newest variants are just that contagious.

And even if that was possible in some first world countries, that wouldn't be sufficient, it would simply be re-imported sooner or later. So there's really no way it's going away.

This is now an endemic human virus and, vaccinated or not, you'll be exposed to it many times over the rest of your lifetime. Barring some technological breakthrough in vaccine development and a big shift in people's attitudes towards them, it's with us forever.

You also don't have to take my word for it, this is an uncontroversial view amongst infectious disease epidemiologists.

[effie]

Vaccines decrease your chance of bad COVID from one small number to another 10x smaller number. "Getting the virus", even if almost certain, isn't something most people have to worry about. Bad COVID is a worry, getting the virus, no.