How is this different from requiring hard hats? A hard hat won’t save you from getting a cut on your head from a dropped hammer but it will save you from having it break your head in two. Should OSHA stop requiring PPE?
I weighed up the options and decided it was by far the lower risk option.
I think people need to be free to make that choice.
Freedom is so valuable.
We're a small population so it's significant.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126225003/...
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaers-9318/fact-ch...
Here is some great information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfFeocgSKvU
(For comparison, 2021 has 31k gun deaths[1] through September and 21.5k road deaths through the first 6 months.)
[1] https://www.gunviolencearchive.org [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/prelimina...
Also, on the download page, "However, in general coding terms in VAERS do not change based on the information received during the follow-up process. VAERS data should be used with caution as numbers and conditions do not reflect data collected during follow-up."
Which is just different ways of saying "this data is probably unreliable", no?
The more important point that you ignore is people are horrible at weighing relative risk. You're obviously intelligent and aware of the biases inherent in judging vaccination risk. I'm sure you know crossing the street is far more risky. There is a consistent pattern of unvaccinated, dying covid patients claiming they underestimated the risk of the illness and wish they had gotten vaccinated. People are literally unable to make that choice for themselves. There's proof.
What's the point of "freedom" if we're all stuck in our houses hiding from variant after variant because we refuse to acknowledge that our government needs to make a decision that will save lives [1] when our actual survival is at risk.
[1] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/covid-19-vaccines-sav...
I believe these are coercive tactics and the government should avoid coercion at all costs.
What if, knowing what we do now about it, OSHA required asbestos-lined jackets?
Lots of older buildings have asbestos that's preventing fires and won't cause noticeable harm so long as it's undisturbed. The fibres are a problem, but a sheet of material under a layer of plaster isn't breaking off fibres that can get into your lungs. If your job is to rip out plaster and re-model buildings then that's a huge problem, but if you just live in a building you're getting much more benefit from it not catching fire than you'd get from very minutely reducing your risk of lung damage from asbestos.
In fact even for a brand new building, although it's banned in some places, "Let's use asbestos" makes more sense than "Eh, so what if it burns down and a few dozen people die", so if those are the available choices you should go with asbestos.
So it is with the available COVID-19 vaccines. SARS-CoV-2 is very dangerous and, outside of New Zealand and a handful of Pacific islands, widespread, so you're just way more likely to get very sick or die as a result of not being vaccinated than suffer a serious side effect, known or hypothetical.