> I understand where you're coming from in pointing out what seems to be inconsistencies. But we've been dealing with coronaviruses since the beginning, while mRNA vaccines were only deployed en masse in 2019/2020 (right?). I don't think this is so inconsistent, and I addressed this in my post. Such limited data is never ideal in making these kind of decisions, but I'd wager we know much more about COVID's risk than mRNA. As I understand it, the technology for mRNA is a few decades old, but this is the first time it's hit the market, is it not? If so, the risk is still in the process of being discovered.

mRNA vaccines were first published in 1989, so 32 years ago.

At this point we've vaccinated more people against COVID with mRNA vaccines than the number of people globally infected with COVID proper. At this point we know more about the risk profile of mRNA vaccines than COVID.

> Generally vaccines have a much longer trial and study period, this has been rushed due to emergency circumstances.

Yes, generally vaccines have a much longer trial period - with a tiny fraction of the participants.

The average vaccine phase II trial has 2,854 participants, and 29,844 in phase III [1]. So far, 4.62 billion doses of the COVID vaccine have been delivered. Since most are two-shot, we can generously round that down to 2,310,000,000 people in this 'trial.'

'Rushed' is the wrong way of looking at it. It went faster, yes, but there's a reason. Since you can't knowingly infect people with ebola to test the efficacy of an ebola vaccine, you get a few thousand people, immunize them and then you wait. And wait. And wait. During the massive outbreak in 2014-2016, only 28,000 people in the world caught it.

On the other hand, by mid-2021 17% of America had caught COVID.

Proving it worked was a much faster exercise.

That it went faster doesn't mean it's less safe, and it certainly doesn't mean isn't effective. It only went fast because it was possible to prove its efficacy so quickly.

The data is clear: hospitalization rates are 15-200X higher in the unvaccinated and death rates are 8-87X higher. Even with Delta. [2]

Why do you think getting it to market faster means its less safe?

> I still disagree that I'm exposing myself to more risk by inaction. My risk is already nearly 0, so I don't really care to minimize it further anyway, but by vaccinating I'm taking on a lot of uncertainty (in personal risk, effectiveness of the vaccine over time, transmission reduction, etc), so it's impossible to assess properly with these unknowns. I would much rather just get COVID. You don't see an issue with that, right?

Your risk of a negative outcome from a vaccine is lower than your risk from infection, and they're both very low. The negative outcome from a vaccine is very low for everyone, while the risk of a negative outcome from COVID is low for you.

> I would much rather just get COVID. You don't see an issue with that, right?

Of course I see an issue with it. The vaccine causes your body to produce a subset of proteins from the COVID genome. A controlled, inert subset. You would rather your body produce whole live viruses that mutate, evolve and want to kill you. That makes no sense.

I agree vaccines aren't a panacea for transmission, but I know they're less risky than whole live viruses shooting out of you lol.

I'd argue that's dark ages thinking but even they were pro-vaccine because they were anti getting sick. Shouldn't really be controversial in this the year of our lord 2021.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3551877/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-brea...