The issue with discussion is that many people (see refurb in above thread) are doing so dishonestly.

It's easy and cheap in terms of time to whatabout, while costly in terms of time to cite ones sources.

Consequently, it's time-effective to troll via whataboutism, without any intention of having a substantive discussion.

For example,

> ... new vaccine technology that hasn't been tested widely... There are many studies with different results, that can be interpreted in many ways, could have been mangled with / cherry picked, has many parameters influencing it, etc.

That's easy to say, in the same way I could say,

'All vaccines that are approved for mass US use go through rigorous safety studies and demonstrate negligible to no safety concerns at scale.'

I've done a lot of research too.

Given our contradictory opinions, only facts actually matter.

Unfortunately, media-style driveby fact pulling has become the standard there as well. I.e. 'Look at this one study I found that supports my position.'

With regards to the measles vaccine and similar widely deployed ones, it is scientifically defensible to say there haven't been issues at scale. (Because we would have seen them)

And with regards to newer mRNA platforms, the irony is that they're conceptually safer than traditional vaccines, because we're skipping intermediate biological steps and directly creating the outcomes we want, rather than trusting our (incredibly complex) immune systems to get things right.

Time will tell on long term results, but from a pathways perspective I'd take a newer mRNA vaccine over a newer live/attenuated vaccine any day of the week.