The downsides of a very new, experimental vaccine that the covid vaccine is, have not been clearly established yet. Partially due to tribal, adherent behaviours like the one you are displaying right now.
I think it is a reasonable point of view to not want to be the testbed for vaccines that were also rushed to the market to reap the profits, let me remind you.
Oh and, I've gotten the vaccine. I'm just not tribal about it.
A bit over 70% of the world population has received covid vaccines as of April 2024. Over 13 billion doses. With the law of big numbers we can assume that nearly all of the worst things that could have happend with the vaccine have been already seen and widely known. The illness itself killed between 7 and 18 million people worldwide. For the vaccines we don't know exactly because it was so rare and that tells you something. Even if we assume lying medical professionals: Everybody knows somebody whose relative died from covid. Nearly nobody knows somebody whose relative died from the vaccine. I don't really see how this is tribal. Maybe it has been tribal to some people at some point, but the years have passed and we have better data now.
Given the biological mechanism of these vaccines, the risks are well-known at this point. The mRNA does not integrate into DNA and degrades within hours to days. We were extremely lucky we had years of science on the mechanisms when the pandemic broke out (+won the scientist who did it a Nobel price). The major serious (but rare) side effects are (1) myocarditis in young men with mRNA vaccines and (2) thrombosis with adenovirus-based vaccines. Both were either known already or identified quickly because of the mentioned huge number of doses given and the careful monitoring then. These risks are measurable, have clear incidence rates, and are lower than the same complications from infection (otherwise millions would have had them).
There is no plausible mechanism for any delayed catastrophic effects years down the line without any signal in the first billions of doses, neither for this vaccine nor for others. At this stage the vaccines are not exactly what I would call "experimental" anymore. They one of the most heavily observed medical interventions in history.
So if you believe there ought to be something wrong with the numbers (incompetence/grand conspiracy) or some weird thing is gonna happens with a delay of multiple years (black swan mechanism), the burden of proof IMO on your side.
I am not from the US, so I might not be up to speed with the tribal pandemic conflicts emerging in your culture. So you may call me tribal, but I prefer to mitigate real risks for my family and me, rather than hypothetical ones proposed by people who don't go into detail beyond a "who knows".
Until people with your mentality allow proper, unbiased science to tell us the facts. Are you suggesting that you are certain that the covid vaccine is entirely safe, and the benefits outweigh the risks ? And what are your credentials ?
So of the 13.84 billion doses administered how many people have seen serious harm and why did I never hear of them?
Note that 13.84 billion is a huge number, if every dose was a powerball lottery ticket we should see around 64 jackbot winners. That means nearly every weird thing that can happen by chance, will happen. And since people were on the edge every weird thing will be reported. But even these reports are all like "yeah that person eas already on the verge of dying or had some other weird medical condition and we can't really establish a clear chain of causality".
Maybe I am a bit allergic to a generic anti-modern-medicine stance, since my neighbour (my best friends mom), died of a preventable disease because she didn't want to get the known-safe medical remedy and spent a fortune on shamans and other greedy healers instead. She wanted a natural thing and died (as was natural before the advent of modern medicine).
There is no downside to taking any vaccine. I've taken 4 different covid vaccines alongside all their associated boosters when they were available for free.
For anyone that isn't afraid of needles and a little arm pain, it's worth it for the peace of mind alone.
This is just wrong. Go figure out which vaccines you haven't had, and then figure out why they haven't been prescribed to you. (Hint: It's not because your doctors are anti-vax)
While you are technically correct, my charitable interpretation of GP is "There is no downside (not grossly outweighed by the upside) to taking any vaccine (against an illness you are likely to come in contact with)".
It's hard to exhaustively list all qualifiers to statements in short form communication.
Still false. Maybe if you qualify it further to currently prescribed vaccines (e.g fda certified ones that haven't been taken off the market for whatever reason, or just superceded by newer better vaccines), you'd be closer, but some of those vaccines still wouldn't be recommended to certain people for certain reasons (say after a certain age, or maybe if they're pregnant, or if they have certain conditions, etc, etc, etc)
I don't think it's being particularly pedantic to say "there is no downside to any vaccine" is just wrong, and not really something that should be repeated. It's more of a religious statement than anything else, and it's the exact kind of thinking that comes out of the insane pressure put on people during covid.
Just so I don't misinterpret your meaning, what specific examples of vaccines are you thinking of?
I'll address one as an example, and you tell me if/how I'm wrong: LAVs, like the MMR vaccine, specifically the Rubella portion is contraindicated in pregnancy for the risk of CRS (in the fetus) and recommended instead after pregnancy. But that is because the risk of contracting it is low enough to not warrant immediate protection. But it is recommended both for the adults and children. It's a temporal recommendation, not against.
You are not weighing it against getting Rubella itself, so it falls under the conditional "illness you are likely to come in contact with".
Same difference. "There is no downside to any vaccine" means at any time, if you see a label that says "vaccine", it's never a bad idea for you to take it.
I'm not claiming any expertise here, but some examples:
The jannsen covid shot: you're likely to come in contact with covid, this one is only recommended for folks who can't do mRNA for whatever reason. (The same concept applies to any vaccine that isn't considered the best of its kind)
HPV: not just blanket recommended to everyone, yet you are very likely to come into contact with HPV.
Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples, but the concept is simple. Just because something is called a vaccine (or medicine in general) does not make it some kinda special power up that everyone should be maximizing their exposure to.
I think it is a reasonable point of view to not want to be the testbed for vaccines that were also rushed to the market to reap the profits, let me remind you.
Oh and, I've gotten the vaccine. I'm just not tribal about it.