Here we go again… yes I want my debilitating arthritis to come from the vaccine instead of the actual infection like what happened with Lymerix. Eye roll
The story of Lymerix is a sad one. People want vaccines to have zero side effects, zero risks, and be applicable to the entire population.
With Lymerix, the upsides of the vaccine vastly outweighed the downsides for people who live in areas with Lyme-carrying ticks, (especially those who spend significant time outdoors), but for most of the population it was pure downsides.
It's a damn shame that antivaxers were about to get it taken off the market entirely because it would have helped a lot of people.
Very sensible. If everyone had adopted that viewpoint then there'd be far fewer "antivaxxers" in the world. Vaccines as pure commercial products you buy for your own use, with governments getting out of the way as much as possible, would be far less controversial.
Unfortunately governments can't stay away from the idea of forcing everyone to vaccinate in reach herd immunity, a concept that seems to appear and disappear depending on what public health wants you to do today. How many people have to take it to reach this threshold? Nobody knows because the people who are supposed to know what it is make it up in order to generate compliance (Fauci admitted to doing this in the New York Times).
For people to start trusting vaccines again, they need to be treated like any other drug. The idea of policy-created herd immunity is attractive but too destructive to tolerate. Once governments think they have a magic policy solution to a problem they can't resist pushing it regardless of consequences.
With Lymerix, the upsides of the vaccine vastly outweighed the downsides for people who live in areas with Lyme-carrying ticks, (especially those who spend significant time outdoors), but for most of the population it was pure downsides.
It's a damn shame that antivaxers were about to get it taken off the market entirely because it would have helped a lot of people.