Downside for all intents and purposes (I understand there have been vanishingly rare instances of heart inflammation and a handful of other side effects, but with billions of doses administered they amount to a rounding error). The only real risk is of mad cow type effects years down the road, but mRNA tech has been in use long enough to know that is a very unrealistic risk.

The benefits are all over the place:
- make bad outcomes almost non-existent, granting that boosters are needed, which is no surprise given our experience with influenza vaccines
- likely make you less contagious because while we see breakthrough cases the unvaxxed are still many times more likely than vaxxed to become infected.
- given 1 above getting everyone vaccinated reduces chances of new variants. Both Delta and the recent new one resulted from viral spread among the unvaxxed.
- tying to the above, I agree that conflicting data exists on viral loads in variant breakthrough cases - but peak viral load of breakthrough cases, if it does get as high as for unvaxxed, occurs less frequently (allowing for need for boosters over time) and tend to be shorter in duration.
- healthier people being vaxxed reduces chances that they will transmit to more vulnerable people.

Basically, the vaccines are all upside. Not guarantees against infection, but nobody ever said they would be. That’s a constant strawman thrown up by the pro-Covid set to try to create downside where none exists.

Mandates are a different matter. I am not sure the federal govt has the power to impose them broadly. I think mandates of folks like DeSantis against local and private corporate vaccine mandates are equally (at least) damaging. At a minimum, a state choosing not to impose mask or vax mandates should stay out of the way of private companies and public locales that believe they need them.

But I do agree that mask mandates actually drive mask resistance, and vax mandates unfortunately do the same. There are 2 different debates - vax resistance to me is irrational almost by definition. There simply is no rational cost-benefit analysis against them IMO. Mandates bring up a slew of additional factors and concerns.







[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 12/01/2021 12:43PM]