I did read the recent discussion on HN around polio, and it does bring up some interesting questions as you’ve noted. But polio’s effects were more prevalent. The WHO says (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelit...) that 1 in 200 infected with polio experience irreversible paralysis (usually the legs), and 5-10% of those with paralysis die, meaning the IFR was 0.025%. The IFR for COVID-19 is incredibly low for those under 50, as most of the deaths impacted senior citizens. Even the CDC's conservative planning scenarios (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...) use a planning IFR for minors of 20 in 1M infections (0.002%) - which is an order of magnitude less than polio.

A big part of what made polio’s vaccine acceptance easy was the graphic imagery of children being afflicted with a lifetime of paralysis. There was a certain psychological impact on society from that imagery. People evaluated the risks and decided they were better off going with the vaccine. Another boost for vaccine confidence was that the vaccines used approaches a that were already in wide use in other vaccines.

> About long term effect of mRNA vaccines... you know what has long term effects? Covid.

The risks of long term effects with COVID are very low, and their severity is very low, and in almost all cases those symptoms disappear. So why is your desire to contain one type of low risk any more important than others’ desire to contain other types of low risk?

Regarding mRNA vaccines - I don’t think you are seeing things the way the vaccine hesitant are. The mRNA vaccine can have long term effects we don’t understand. Just because we are focused on its mechanism for efficacy doesn’t meant here aren’t other possible mechanisms involved that we haven’t understood yet. Likewise, we don’t know if any of the other vaccine ingredients will have long-term effects. The mRNA vaccine doses are not solely composed of mRNA material and lipids. And certainly we’ve seen numerous products - both medical and non-medical - banned decades after their initial introduction. The risks of that are low, but it’s nonzero. And I shouldn’t have to say this, but in case it helps make my points more acceptable, I am vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine as is my entire family.

> Did you hear about a single person dying in hospital from covid saying, "we'll maybe I'm dying but I'm proud of my decision to not get vaccinated, not supporting mask wearing" or whatever? Because plenty of such people recognized they were horribly wrong in their estimations.

I don’t understand why you’re bringing this up. This is the exact type of anecdotal risk estimation that you call out a few sentences earlier. I could equally say that the few people who experience severe vaccine side effects may also experience regret. Or that years down the road, it is possible that all those who received [some vaccine] will regret their choice if it is found to cause cancer or something else. The thing is, we don’t really know because we are dealing with the unknown. We don’t understand either the virus or the human body fully. For this and other reasons, I feel it is legitimate for people to choose their own risk profile based on their experiences and gut. I also don’t think anyone should be obligated to undergo a medical procedure like vaccination against their will, because bodily autonomy is a fundamental civil liberty and because I don’t think here’s an obligation to have to take action to protect others against some third-party agent like a virus.