[roenxi]

> how could you possibly know that your symptoms are caused by the vaccine?

They can't, and often neither can the doctors. That is one of the major practical reasons why vaccinations should be voluntary - it is quite hard to assess the evidence of what exactly medicine does. Some things take a while for the evidence to really form a meaningful pattern.

It was like them declaring the vaccine safe and effective after a few months of trials - that isn't a crazy standard but if the vaccine literally caused people to drop dead after 12 months for some weird reason they just couldn't have detected it because not enough time had passed.

[bryanrasmussen]

>They can't, and often neither can the doctors. That is one of the major practical reasons why vaccinations should be voluntary

OK, so vaccines that improve the situation because of creating herd immunity should not be mandatory because a small number of the people taking the vaccine may think that medical problems they develop some time after vaccination was caused by the vaccination without any particular proof that the vaccination was the cause, thus allowing enough people to opt out of taking the vaccines destroying the benefits of herd immunity.

>but if the vaccine literally caused people to drop dead after 12 months for some weird reason they just couldn't have detected it because not enough time had passed.

is there a specific time period cut off for this scenario in your head? What if a vaccine caused people to drop dead after 50 years for some reason, we should wait 50 years then.

[roenxi]

I'm certainly open to that idea, although I'll note specifically with the COVID vaccines they don't lead to herd immunity. They don't appear to do much to stop transmission in practice, I'm aware of 1 person who didn't get COVID after being vaccinated and the vast majority of COVID transmissions in Australia are from vaccinated people.

The COVID vaccines were strictly personal protection.

> is there a specific time period cut off for this scenario in your head?

No; although personally rather than specific timelines I'd prefer that the people compelling me to get vaccinated had evidence they thought was compelling - they appeared to think threats were necessary which does make me doubt the quality of the evidence. That is the thing about voluntary administration of medical procedures - everyone gets to decide their own standard of evidence. Maybe some people just won't get vaccinated.