Sometimes I still sit here and think about how 3 years ago, scientists pulled off a fucking miracle of developing 3 brand new vaccines for a novel virus that had never had a vaccine for it before in like 6 months, scaled it out to produce billions of doses, and then like 40% of the country just said "nah".
@JessTheUnstill I did get a vaccine myself, so mostly I am with you on this. But I can see the other side too, and ironically for the reasons you mentioned. Developing a vaccine in 6 months (including abbreviated human trials!) using a totally new technology (messenger RNA). How amazing a miracle! But also: what could possibly go wrong? Again, I did get a vaccine and am very thankful for it. It did not come soon enough to save my mom.
If anyone with those concerns bothered to look into the details (which I and many others did), they would see that the the speed of the trials weren't in the form of cutting corners in the the trial methods, but in the funding and resources provided to allow for parallel actions.
After weighing risks of a properly vetted vaccine which hasn't had a decade of use in the general public against the known risks of the rapidly spreading disease in addition to the unknown long-term risks of that disease, it becomes very hard to see the other side as anything other than lazy, obstinate, credulous, having an irrationally fearful bias against taking action or a combination thereof.
@ericjmorey @JessTheUnstill Well, I have to disagree with you on the lazy + obstinate + credulous + etc. thing, for at least some of the no-thanks-vaccine crowd. But good point about parallel actions, which sped things up; that was one of the things that encouraged me, personally, to get the vaccine.