[jsnell]

> It ought to be possible to say "Hey this looks kind of funny, could the vaccines be having weird effects in this .0000001% of the population?" without daggers coming out all around.

That's one in a billion. No, it's not possible to reason about a weird effect affecting less than one person in all of EU + US combined.

But we do actually know what happens when there is a legit safety concern with the vaccines affecting a slice of the population, since it has happened. The AZ vaccine turned out to have rare (but not one in a billion rare), serious and even lethal, complications for young women. The public health authorities picked up on this within a month, and acted to stop the use of that vaccine first for that at-risk group and later for everyone.

That was all fairly low drama.