I think this in an important conversation to have because it's a conversation that is often dismissed off the cuff without even waiting to hear what comes next. COVID-19 has become one of the most polarizing topics of our era, and it blocks rational discussion of issues that with any other subject would be productive.
I have no doubt that there was a percentage of the population negatively impacted by the vaccine. There always is with any vaccination. The fact that there was enormous social and economic pressure to get the vaccine contributed to a larger than average amount of the population voluntarily getting a vaccine that had skipped through many of the safety protocols because of the state of emergency society was in at the time. It was to the point that people's employment was at risk if they did not get vaccinated. For some people, waiting a period of time to see what side effects are of a relatively new type of vaccine is important and I think reasonable.
I am hoping that the hot topic aspect of this is dialing down enough that we can talk about long term risk and side effects of vaccination just like we can talk about long term risk and side effects of most drugs, without becoming distracted by our own political beliefs. I don't know if many people are approaching this conversation out of a genuine interest to discuss the side effects of the vaccine as it is to get into their opinion about Covid-19. That's a dangerous place to be, because it means we can't actually have decent conversations about this topic.
Another issue in trying to have a discussion about this is that the censorship of information, real information that was later confirmed by the CDC, has degraded public trust in authorities to the point that everyone has their own "sources" that can be trusted. We can't even agree on what facts are facts. So when people genuinely try to start this discussion, the question is, which facts do we trust, which side effects are real and which aren't? And then you start to see people fall on a political spectrum of which facts they will accept. I honestly don't know how to overcome this problem.
