[photochemsyn]

I personally went and got vaccinated the second month the Pfizer vaccine was released (but not the first) and even so I viewed myself more as a guinea pig in a clinical trial than anything else. As I had no immediate negative symptoms, I then got the second dose on schedule. Had some minor muscle stiffness in the arm after that one that persisted for a few months. I then got the booster when it came out, as at that point the data seemed pretty clear: side effects were minimal, and the risks of hospitalization and long Covid justified vaccination.

Notably however I certainly didn't expect that the vaccine wouldn't be 'sterilizing' and at the time the FDA was keeping quiet about the fact that vaccinated people could be asymptomatic carriers and spreaders of Sars-CoV2, which now seems widely accepted. The clinical data from the original trials has yet to be released as I understood it, and it likely showed that as well.