Ok, maybe its just a coincidence that it was published right when the current dangers of misinformation are so high and so many are failing to believe science.
Believing in science means believing in falsification and sceptism. This was published during the ongoing replication crisis in medicine where we're finding that more than half of cancer studies don't replicate [1]. This replication crisis hasn't been put on hold and all science is now deemed irrefutable or you are VACCINE HESISTANT and DANGEROUS.
I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines because we're at billions of doses and there is so much uncorrelated data about the vaccines, and they're so controversial and their safety/efficacy is being looked at by so many people that one can be relatively confident about their efficacy and safety (so long as you look at uncensored information to avoid systemic bias). We don't need to be science denialists and start denouncing scepticism on safety grounds, we can point out there are special reasons to be confident in the vaccines.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/5103048...
I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines <- Is this "mostly" qualifier not the dangerous front end of misinformation and vaccine hesitancy?
I say "mostly confident" because we have literally zero data of effects after 3 years and can only make inferences, and it's foolish to feign knowledge you do not have to avoid being called "hesitant", but my lack of confidence does not make me hesitate to recommend the vaccine. I also lack knowledge of long term effects of COVID itself which may in fact be worse than the long term effects of any vaccine given COVID does most of what the vaccines do plus extra nasty stuff.
Which vaccines were in "both vaccines?" An mRNA and J&J, or just both administrations of a two-shot mRNA vaccine?
(Not OP but) Yes. Reasoning despite uncertainty is entirely possible; if you want a mathematical formalism, look into Bayesian statistics.
Are you doing this on purpose?
You seem to be concerned that I don't maintain a state of complete agnosticism in any matter which I lack data for, but it's really hard to do so in practice in a world of distinct choices. Most everybody will either get vaccinated or not get vaccinated and at least have made an implicit prediction about the future. Since I was pressured into making that choice it seems hardly surprising that I'm willing to opine on this issue where I lack data.
I do not understand. HN forum are places where "question everything" should be the norm, especially about science, and more especially about health when so much money is at stake.
It seems we are in a religious quest, with virtue signaling signs everywhere, to laudate the vaccine COVID-19 miracle. Everything is "magic". Somehow one could make a parallel with the state of the economy and the stock market. We are printing our way to prosperity as we are saving the world with "methode Coué" and of course brutal coercition (mandatory vaccination at state level).
What part of "you can not buy time" don't you understand ?
You may throw billions, no, trillions, quadrillons, bazillions to all the Silicon Valleys startups and brains to developp a vaccine in a matter of months ; but you can not buy a 3, 5, 10 years study with this money. You can't even buy one month or one second, you just have to wait, this is life and bio-trans-human thinking still can't and never will overcome nature, space and time.
So you might be "mostly" confident about the vaccine, I would say that this is the absolute maximum optimism best case scenario adjective you can use. Moderna, Pfizer sure are, "risk big, win big".
But we'll have to wait a few years more to completely assert something like "safe and effective" for the COVID vaccines, that is not a fact anybody can deny.
And the "dangers of misinformation" have been high for a long time now (perhaps since antiquity). Modern climate change denial has its roots in the 90s, and modern vaccine skepticism is similarly old.
How do you know your medical provider agrees with you about what is "blatantly fraudulent?"
One way is to assume that all health research is fraudulent, unless proven otherwise through replication by multiple unrelated parties.