There was a huge segment of society angrily screaming at everyone that everything was perfectly safe, if you didn't take it you were anti-vax and wanted to kill grandma. It was absolutely insanity on every social media channel. I'm sure some nuanced bits were lost in the noise, but it was virtually impossible to openly discuss even hesitation to vaccinate, much less complications.
We've heard from 2 local people in our small community who had family members die within 24 hours of vaccination. They were afraid to talk about it because of the blow back that came from anyone mentioning complications. A scary side of a lot of people came out and it's permanently affected my perception of a great many.
Maybe there was a male bias in the clinical trials, but I have a hard time believing any information about complications would have been released or accepted at that time.
Except when it came to people who were pregnant or hoping to get pregnant. There was relatively open discussion of the potential health impacts in those situations because those were not well understood due to the previously mentioned bias.
The general consensus at the time was to get the vaccine, because the thought was that any side effects would be less severe than potentially getting Covid without that extra protection. But those recommendations usually came with a lot more “discuss it with your doctor” disclaimers than the overall “just get it” recommendations for the rest of the population who wasn’t thinking about pregnancies.
That slight reservation shows that it wasn’t just a huge coverup to get people vaxxed. It was a genuine lack of knowledge because of how these medicines are almost always tested.