There has, however, been evidence of long-term effects of catching COVID in some cases.
It is pretty obvious which option to take with the currently available evidence.
So far, there hasn't been nearly the same amount of public scrutiny as with your average vaccine, either. Sure, people have taken in record numbers, but we have far less information about long-term effects than usual. And certainly, there have been extraordinary incentives to push vaccination, along with extraordinary mismanagement of the pandemic in general.
The difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated isn't that one is more ethical or risk-averse than the other. It's a difference in estimation of where the most risk resides: in the disease, or in our management thereof.
The eyes of the world have been glued to this. People actually know the different "brands" of vaccines. Tabloids have discussions on them and their side effects … the scrutiny and expectations from the public seem extremely high, so I’m not sure why you think anyone involved in this could afford to no be very tough and detail oriented in the scrutiny of this vaccine.
This seems like a deeply weird worldview that doesn’t in any way match up to reality. Your statement seems highly implausible and just makes no sense. Do you have any concrete evidence to back it up?
the vaccines came out last year, there hasn't even been a long term yet.
mrna vaccines are definitely new science, unless you can point me to another mrna vaccine that has been distributed to the public at this scale?
This tells you nothing about the predictability of the practice of the science. It also cannot be used to gild by association anything that wishes to be marketed as a "vaccine".
A couple of people have died, I'd call that a long-term adverse effect. Presumably way less people than would otherwise have died from Covid, so not to say you shouldn't get vaccinated. But to claim there are no known long-term adverse effects is wrong.
Long-lasting but quickly appearing adverse effects, like death, are pretty well understood and are calculated in.