The COVID-19 pandemic

[Bjays93]

Again, none of this means the vaccine is unsafe and the benefits of taking it vastly outweigh the risks, but one simply cannot say there are no risks and this is 100% safe because there no way for us to know this.

By the same measure, though ...

• Are there long-term health impacts from asymptomatic COVID?
  
• Are there long-term health impacts from being on a ventilator?
  
• Are there long-term health impacts from doing too many Zoom meetings?
  
• Are there long-term health impacts from ingesting microplastics and nanoplastics?
  
• Are there long-term health impacts from living in a house with solar cells on the roof?
  
• Are there long-term health impacts from eating cannabis edibles?
  

There are many questions to which we don't know the absolute answers, and yet they don't stop us living our lives making rational decisions.

Today's molecular biologists have far greater understanding of the COVID virus behaviour and infection mechanisms, and the antibodies required to repel it, than could have been imaginable just 30-40 years ago. That, in combination with the hundreds of thousands of people who have participated in Stage 3 trials, and the 2B or so people that have been vaccinated, put the currently-approved vaccines on a level of safety far beyond most pharmaceuticals that have been approved in the past few decades.

Science is never absolute, and there will always be new discoveries, but the safety of these vaccines -- based on current scientific knowledge -- really is very, very high.

I am in no way disagreeing with this. It's why I specifically said the risks of covid outweigh those of the vaccine. But that's an analysis and a decision that each individual has to make and to say having any concerns is ridiculous and a dismissal of objective truth (i.e. the flat earth illustration that was used) that's categorically false and that's what I was responding to. 

In fact we already know theres a clotting issue (infinitesimally small) with AZ and potentially increased heart inflammation in youth with Pfizer. I trust that scientists are on top of this and analyzing everything possible when assessing risks and benefits and if there were to be long term impacts from the vaccine given the speed and scale of the rollout you can bet that the entire science community would rapidly seek to allay or solve those problems and concerns. 

It is my personal belief that currently the risks of long haul covid, even in "non severe" cases vastly outweighs the risk of the vaccine. I have friend of mine who are young and healthy quit sports after getting covid, anecdotal but still it helps me draw my conclusion. 

I personally cannot take the vaccine (yet) for health reasons that I'd rather not divulge publicly, but my hope is to be able to take it in the fall and in the meantime everyone who can, should get vaccinated imo to help protect people like myself who cant get vaccinated at the moment. 

But again my original point was simply that it is untrue to say that there are objectively zero risks to taking the vaccine and anyone with concerns is a lunatic. People should educate themselves and hopefully all come to the same reasonable conclusion but there are some legitimate reasons for people to have concerns and people should be looking to allay them and not outright dismiss them. That's what I had a problem with.