[nsainsbury]

That's true. And I agree that the vaccines have saved lives - mostly, of the old and the very sick/unhealthy.

However, what is less clear today is whether there has been a net positive or negative effect of the vaccine for young healthy people. You can only come to that conclusion if you actually had high quality data and studies on vaccine side-effects, effectiveness in population groups stratified by age, health, etc.

I suspect that the vaccines, mandates, lockdowns, etc. have been a net negative for the overall health of young (<50), and healthy people, and the body of scientific evidence will support this position in the future. It's just cloudy today because it's wrapped up in politics...but the science will eventually win out.

[fabian2k]

We have high-quality data on the vaccines and their side effects. We don't have RCTs with billions of people, but that is data we never had for anything and can't reasonably get.

Judging the risk/benefit ratio is the primary purpose of the regulatory agencies that approve vaccines. I don't see any reason to believe the claim that the vaccines are harmful for everyone below 50, that sounds quite outrageous to me. There have been adjustments based on new data for the vaccines a few times, e.g. younger people are generally recommended to be vaccinated with Biontech and not Moderna or AZ based on the side effects of these vaccines. That doesn't mean the risk/benefit ratio is bad there, it only means that we have vaccines with a more favorable profile for those age groups.

[jeromegv]

Exactly. They DID make adjustments to not give Moderna/AstraZeneca to younger people because they had the side effect data and compared it to the risk of getting COVID and realized that Pfizer was probably better at mitigating those risks

Another clear case of someone implying totally crazy things (younger folks without the vaccine would have been better without the vaccine) with absolutely NOTHING to support it.

[mandmandam]

.. If only we had clear data to make such a decision.

However, collecting and analyzing that data would likely have eaten a percent or two into the eighty billion dollars Pfizer made last year, so I guess there's nothing we can do but trust the same authorities that brought us 'natural origin for sure', 'masks don't work', 'NNVTs don't mean anything any more', and 'Covid isn't airborne'.

[jeromegv]

Why do you mix mandates and lockdowns in there? What does it have to do with the vaccine?

If you bring lockdowns into the picture, you have to compare to what would have happened WITHOUT a lockdown as well, how many more deaths in hospitals, etc. The countries that tried this strategy have a very high excess death to compared to those that tried to limit human contacts (especially PRE vaccine).