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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Covid vaccine was not studied the way drugs normally are, so they don't know what the side effects are. And it was rammed down everyone's throat so "public health" authorities had to present a unified lie that there was absolutely zero downside.

People happily take and request drugs with long lists of side effects and accept the risk, so there is societal understanding and tolerance of the tradeoff in taking a drug. But because the covid vaccine was forced on people, they were not allowed to make an informed choice so the government had to pretend there were no risks as part of claiming authority to mandate it.

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Isn't this how vaccines have always been? I had to take various vaccines in school, and no kid I saw batted an eye.

The whole series of controversy seems like making a mountain out of a molehill. Of course the COVID vaccines have side effects, some of them probably suppressed from the general public and many more too unknown/uncertain to officially label. The vaccine made me sick as stink. But my observation was that people were taking any opportunity, like a supposed 1-in-1 million increased risk of a heart attack, into demonizing a public health resource that protects them from very probable hospitalization, chronic injury, or from killing someone else.

There was never going to be an "informed choice," no matter how maniacally transparent the vaccine testers were. Aside from a handful of people with sensitive conditions, no sane person would turn down the vaccine if every single unsubstantiated side effect was true, but it seems that a majority of the country was prepared to do that.

I get a fever from the vaccine, but I don't care because the real thing would be so much worse.

There's no scientific way, no way based on reality, you can say that. You had a sample size of one, and an unknown.

The point is, there are risks about the vax. Risks that aren't being made public. In fact, the public is assured it's safe.

Your comfort is based on assumptions, and those assumptions are based on info from authorities that have not been transparent.

> no sane person would turn down the vaccine

I'm not sure how a sane person would evaluate the risks between "unknown long term side effects" and "maybe less severe symptoms upon contacting COVID".

I can easily tip the scales of the balance by claiming an unsubstantiated side effect that can't be disproven now: 90% chance of death 8 years after vaccination.

FWIW there are claims (whether substantiated or not) that the risks of the vaccine have been vastly under-represented by analyzing death rates during the periods of peak COVID vaccination. I'm not claiming they are true or valid, but if you give credit to "every single unsubstantiated side effect", I'm not sure how you'd come to the conclusion that a sane person would definitely choose to vaccinate.

Personal disclosure: 3 shots.

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