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COVID-19 is not a harmless disease, especially for the elderly. You can argue about children and young adults without risk factors, but that is only a small part of the population in developed countries. A large part of the population is older and/or has risk factors that put them at a higher risk due to COVID-19.

So yes, large parts of the population did need that protection now. And while the process was accelerated, the vaccines were tested and closely monitored.

> You can argue about children and young adults without risk factors, but that is only a small part of the population in developed countries.

Not even close. As of April 2023, there have been less than 80,000 deaths of people under the age of 50. That's 2/3 of the population.

So 80,000 deaths are irrelevant? When a safe and effective vaccine exists?

In a country of over 300 million people it indicates a fairly low risk of death from covid for most of the population. Low enough that i think people could reasonably opt out if I they were worried about potential long term side effects from a first generation mRNA vaccine. I rolled the dice and got vaccinated, along with my whole family, but we didn’t need it. We had all had covid already with no drama. So I’m going to be pretty angry if we find out there are even mild long term side effects from it.

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