[offsign]

Here's how someone in the field recently explained it to me...

Let's say you have a vaccine that appears effective (great, right?) You give it to 1000 willing test subjects, and most become immune (fantastic, right?). Then, three to six months later 50 of the subjects go into terminal liver failure due to their body's immune response to the vaccine (as determined by their genetics.)

It's not just whether a vaccine 'works' for you, it's whether it's effective AND safe over the huge genetic pool that is humanity (as measured over a sufficient period of time). This kind of stuff comes up all the time with drug trials, and it's why there's a process, and things can't be rushed.

[gman83]

Yeah and just imagine how the anti-vax conspiracy crowd would respond in that situation. Things would get really crazy really fast. Even in a pandemic we can't rush this.

[pbhjpbhj]

Well, in this pandemic we don't need to rush this as mortality is relatively low. If it were a variant Ebola, but with the same transmission rate as Covid19 then we'd sure was hell be rushing it.

[tinus_hn]

However you put it there is a limit to how long you can wait. It’s never going to be risk free.

Of course incidents where 5% of the subjects of a drug test die do not happen ‘all the time’, if they happen it’s on the news. And it’s not on the news ‘all the time’.

Balancing risks does not mean attempting to avoid all the risks.

[minerjoe]

Given the enormous amount of advertizing bought by the pharmaceutical companies, I would not think that the "news" can be considered objective.

[beagle3]

I did not research this, but in my undirected layman reading have encountered at least the following three cases in which vaccine was more harmful than the disease:

Live polio vaccine which wasn’t properly attenuated and caused polio;

A vaccine in the us that caused Gillan-Barre syndrome way more often than disease symptoms (1960s or early 1970s, don’t remember disease name)

A vaccine given to children in Sweden that dramatically increased chances for narcolepsy.

It is important to recognize that not all vaccines ever produced are safe for everyone, and there are a few which were a total net negative for society (even though most are net positive despite some bad outcomes)

Vaccines, especially if mandatory, need to be held to an extremely higH standard of Safety. It is my impression that the COVID-19 panic is leading us to approved though net negative vaccines. We will only know much later , unfortunately.