The vaccine didn’t work as well as we thought it would.
It did work to some extent. It’s there in the numbers. But it was not the resounding success that, say, the smallpox or polio vaccines were. It attenuated the disease a little.
That might change some of the calculus. Or it might not. It’s hard to tell the difference between myocarditis caused by the vaccine or from COVID or from other factors.
Imagine it’s you who gets to make the call. Whatever call you make will be roundly criticized and you might be wrong. If you’re wrong more people will die.
The polio vaccine has been around for 70 years and smallpox vaccination has been around for over 200 years. If you were to assess the polio vaccine a few years after its introduction and compare it to mRNA vaccines a few years after their introduction, then the COVID-19 vaccine might actually come out better. There was a major safety problem with one company's process for manufacturing the initial polio vaccine. 11 children died. If you read contemporary reporting from 1957 - two years after the vaccine was released - you see quotes like this: "The failure of this vaccine to prevent disease and at times death in certain vaccinated individuals and its apparent inability to reduce the number of carriers clearly indicate that polio will not be "wiped out" by this vaccine."
It did work to some extent. It’s there in the numbers. But it was not the resounding success that, say, the smallpox or polio vaccines were. It attenuated the disease a little.
That might change some of the calculus. Or it might not. It’s hard to tell the difference between myocarditis caused by the vaccine or from COVID or from other factors.
Imagine it’s you who gets to make the call. Whatever call you make will be roundly criticized and you might be wrong. If you’re wrong more people will die.