While it's clear from the rest of your post that you meant the vaccines, you accidentally ended up making your own counterpoint! It is ABSOLUTELY possible for millions of people to have long term side effects from COVID, the disease.
It would be a brand new thing for a vaccine to give so many people side effects so long after the shot. No vaccine has ever given people side effects that didn't show up within about 6 weeks.
Yes, some people had side effects from the Polio vaccine. But you know what was far more likely to cause lifelong side effects? Polio!
Why do you believe this is?
"Long term effects" here doesn't mean what you think it means....
In the past, long term side effects were still occuring with weeks or few month after the shot. However, the statistical signal may be delayed for years or decades to manifest.
It's very hard to think of a way how anything could cause side effect years down the line. Vaccines do not contain beryllium or asbestos. The mRNA vaccines do not even contain mercury or other heavy metals. Mind you, 'none' means less than a can of tuna. They do not remain in the body for long. None of it.
That's why people aren't too worried, rationally. Long term effects whould have shown already.
If you indeed mean COVID, I agree. There may be late long term effects, because of the diffuse organ damage and persistent infections.
Of course any strong immune stimulation may slightly increase or decrease the risk for derailing or aging the immune system. Which may sooner, e.g. autoimmune disease risk, or later, e.g. lymphoma risk, manifest.
For COVID it's a silly debate, because you will get infected or vaccinated in any case.
Here's a doctor, you don't usually get to hear from raising concerns you don't seem think to exit.
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/04/scicheck-idaho-doctor-make...
judging from comments on this forum alone, it would be a career suicide in this political climate.
I know which of these two I consider gaslighting.
Long covid has yet to be scientifically proven.
after any critical illness, doesn't even have to be an infection, with an ICU stay where intubation was required, the odds are ~50% you will be left with a permanent injury for life. However even after relatively moderate infection a permanent lifelong injury may remain.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21161-post-in...
It's not like injuries are binary: dead or alive.
you could also end up alive, but in a wheelchair with oxygen for life.
There is a huge spectrum in between, anything from vague brainfog, properly known as executive dysfunction, to partial or total paralysis due to a neuropathy often requiring mechanical ventilation, narcolepsy, organ failures, autoimmune conditions, and so on and so on.
None of this is new, nor controversial.
Brain damage - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01693-6
Pulmonary function - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7997144/
Cardiovascular disease - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-020-0413-9