The reasons vary. None of them are quantifiable. A few common ones:
- "We don't know the long-term effects" -> triggering an immune response is extremely quick in terms of effects. Any issues (eg the highly unlikely potential clotting issue in Astra-Zeneca) are actually identified quickly. Vaccines aren't drugs. Drugs are prone to long-term effects. Vaccines are different;
- (now defunct) "The vaccine had an emergency authorization" -> it still went through Phase 3 Clinical Trials. People don't actually understand what "emergency authorization" actually means. It's primarily administrative, not clinical;
- "The vaccine doesn't prevent transmission" -> It greatly diminishes severe outcomes including hospitalization and death. Immune response isn't simply a boolean switch. Viruses go through several stages before they become infections. Respiratory illnesses will probably still have the virus get to the respiratory tract and allow transmission;
- "Risks of death are low" -> collapse of the hospital system would not only impact Covid patients but non-Covid patients. We already have had healthcare workers who essentially had to decide who lives and who dies. That's a lot of responsibility to put on someone for an unquantifiable risk;
- "I did my own research" -> No, you didn't. You watched a Youtube video from an unverifiable source or just a plain whacko. That's not research. Stop using that word;
- "Just vaccinate the people at risk" -> we don't really know who they are, particularly in young people. Some people have severe reactions for reasons that aren't entirely clear yet;
- "Body autonomy" -> Diseases don't affect just you. You can transmit a virus to people who are at risk and may not for legitimate medical reasons be able to get a vaccine;
- "This was rushed" -> Actually, it wasn't. DARPA had promoted mRNA vaccine research for years before Covid-19 and we can all be thankful for that;
- "It's no more severe than the flu" -> In a bad year, the flu might kill 40,000 people in the US. The Covid death count stands at 800,000 at least and that's probably underreported by a lot, particularly with pandering politicians keen to underplay the significance and impact (eg New York not initially counting nursing home resident deaths).
I could go on.
One statistic I love to hear from anti-vaxxers is "the death rate is only 1% (or 2%)". If there is a bowl of 100 M&Ms and one of them will kill you, are you eating one? A large football stadium might hold 50,000 people. Are you going to a match when 500 of those people will die?
We've now administered billions of vaccine doses worldwide and yet there's no quantifiable risk of adverse effects. Vaccines are a medical miracle that has eliminated polio and smallpox and all but eliminated a host of other devastating diseases. The only difference between those vaccines and Covid-19 is that it's more recent. That's it.
If a disease affected just you then I'd say "go right ahead and don't get it" but it doesn't. And the minute risk of adverse outcomes from that vaccine outweighing the very quantifiable benefits to not only you but other people is just a level of irrational selfishness that I find deeply depressing.
It also convinces me just how screwed we are on climate change when people are willing to let themselves and other die rather than have the minor inconvenience of a shot.
Driving to the supermarket is riskier than having the vaccine yet I don't see people not driving places. Humans are bad at assessing risk. The sad part here is this irrationality is impacting other people in very real ways. Children being left without parents, that sort of thing.
And please let's not play the false equivalence game here and say "there are two sides here". There really aren't.