To me being sceptical of COVID vaccine is entirely reasonable. Looking back at how we evaluated vaccines before it should make it clear that something went wrong.
And when those pushing for it can not even have honest discussion of effectiveness like does it prevent spread or just worst cases? The first one has long been standard for vaccines, but this one was later. And then it seems even vaccinated did get the disease, so why did we use the vaccine status as metric, instead well more effective and certain testing?
Science is about question and understanding. But we should also continue to question what we think we understand, because the hubris of man has often lead us to believe we're more right than we are.
If you won't even consider the possibility that the covid vaccine is harmful, even only to an unknown subset of the population, you're not exactly one to be calling others less sophisticated.
That’s not what OP said. It is possible, indeed likely, that in some small subset of people, the COVID vaccine(s) do more harm than good.
However, the evidence suggests that the negative impacts of COVID itself outweigh by an order of magnitude the risks of vaccinating the whole population.
If we are able to identify those people for whom the vaccine is likely to be more harmful than protective, we can weigh up options sensibly, but without that concrete data, it is hard to justify maintaining a position that the “vaccines are not safe” as a generalisation given the overwhelming body of evidence that shows that the vaccines are effective at limiting community transmission, improving outcomes for those who are infected, and reduces the likelihood of infection in the first place.
The statistical argument should consider both the likelihood of infection when unvaccinated and the likely negative outcomes from such an infection and weigh it against the likelihood of an adverse reaction, the likelihood of infection post-vaccination, and the likelihood of negative outcomes from such an infection post-vaccination.
These factors are all changing quickly, especially the likelihood of infection as community infection rates drop, but based on my understanding, we have not yet reached an inflection point where the risk of a negative outcome post infection outweighs the likelihood of infection with negative outcomes without vaccination - at least on a community health level. Individuals may be able to further influence these factors themselves as well, reducing exposure by not using public transport, or not attending events with a high concentration of people, or wearing face masks, etc., which means that ultimately, it boils down to individuals trying to make informed decisions about their own health with incomplete information.
This is a very difficult thing to ask people to do, especially considering that half of the population have below average intelligence levels, and may struggle to interpret the data for themselves. As a result, advocating an “anti-vaccination” position likely increases the net harm done to the community, and is not at all conflicting with making a personal decision based on your own research and interpretation of evidence.
This is basically what I meant. I recognize requirements to be vaccinated to enter a restaurant is stupid if you require it with the expectation that you're making other people safer. But as a whole we're all safer if we're all vaccinated because it was proven to put less strain on hospitals, and it's somewhat empty hope is what made people feel comfortable with getting back to "normal". Which is important because a lot of people did suffer in very real ways from lock downs.
I support and encourage skepticism, and especially with anything that has a profit motive (including vaccines). But it was pretty clear that COVID vaccines were more good than bad.
Science is inherently a social and norms-based process, so it is more accurate to state it is about _mutual_ questioning and understanding.
> If you won't even consider the possibility that the covid vaccine is harmful, even only to an unknown subset of the population, you're not exactly one to be calling others less sophisticated.
Curious how the "vaccine-skeptic" crowd only directs its skepticism in one direction.
> There's plenty of anti-COVID vaccine discussion as one example.
Let's be honest, anti-COVID vaccine discussion is not the same as anti-vaccine discussion in general. Latter is ultimately stupid, but former... might be just a reaction about too severe government's reaction on some situation.
How about discussion about different anti-COVID vaccine from different sources - are you really treat Western vaccines and Russian ones as the same? These two give you kind of different political effects when you can visit one list of countries with one vaccine and another list of countries with another one. I do not remember any discussion like that with any other vaccines.
And by the way, there were a lot of changes of upvotes/downvotes near my comment, thank you for not being silent about such controversial topic.
And when those pushing for it can not even have honest discussion of effectiveness like does it prevent spread or just worst cases? The first one has long been standard for vaccines, but this one was later. And then it seems even vaccinated did get the disease, so why did we use the vaccine status as metric, instead well more effective and certain testing?