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When I took the vaccine, it was the beginning of Delta variant, I don't remember it being known at that time that the original strain would stop circulating or what the effects of Delta would be, and especially not long COVID related symptoms. I also didn't know a less virulent strain, Omicron would come and spread and take over the others. There was also the issue of ICUs reaching their max capacity, you can't have everyone be treated for severe COVID at the same time, so you needed a lot of people vaccinated fast to relive the medical system from that load. And finally, it wasn't known that it would still allow spread, or that it wouldn't work as well from Delta and Omicron as the original variant. When I took it as a 30 year old in very good health, I did so to protect my parents, my older coworkers, my friends that are immunocompromised, and to hope to avoid a bad time and possible long Covid symptoms. I'd already known two people who had died from COVID, one my age by obese, and one elderly. I wasn't worried of dying from COVID myself, but I still didn't want to get it, and I was worried of long term effects, still am on that. Even now, I don't think anyone can claim a unanimous decision was better or worse, even in hindsight. The positive second order effects of vaccination are not clearly quantified, the negative effects of Covid long term are not clearly quantified, and the negative effects of the various vaccines are not clearly quantified. The reason we're even all arguing about it is because it's very ambiguous knowing which is best, vaccination or not. If it was obvious one was a better decision we wouldn't be having all these debates of opinion. |