I thought about writing this when the vaccine trials were wrapping up, but was slow, and by the time I had it ready, I saw SSC say the overwhelming majority of people in this sphere were vaccinated so I figured it would be a waste of time.

I didn't get one of the three vaccines available in the USA, if I were in a higher risk demographic/lifestyle/less lazy, I would have made the radvac. I would be willing to get novavax or soberana. I have no needle anxiety (if it's relevant). I have studied this stuff on my own since well before the pandemic and am decent enough in the lab that I could probably do a lot of the work of making a recombinant vaccine with the correct equipment

I tried the inside view/outside view method of forecasting and am satisfied with the result.

Some things I view as the outside view: -early years of mass vaccination campaigns are usually associated with disasters (1850-70s cowpox campaign, cutter/wyeth during polio, swine flu in the 70s, pandemrix in 2009, many others) -the FDA is bad at evaluating new technology (they approve things that shouldn't be, and block things they shouldn't); as an example, it took five years to pull thalidomide. -vaccines are safe drugs not because of anything inherent to the class, but due to the stringent standards to which they're usually held

I saw nothing inside this situation which gave me unusual confidence about this particular mass vaccination campaign. I did see an apparent relaxation of the stringent standards usually applied to vaccine approvals.

I figured I'd wait a month, and if anything unforseen happened, I'd wait another month, looking for signs of toxicity of the payload, toxic vehicle effects, OAS, ADE, and more data on the estimated risk to me from catching covid. I saw the j&j pause for VITT, the pfizer data on 'it has more of an antibody response than we expected', then later the aspiration studies, the legislation making it hard to get side effects compensated (if it were safe, there would be the opposite, and people with visible side effects would be celebrated as heroes), the pulling of medical licenses of doctors who were public about the side effect risks...eventually I was just out, I'm not expecting data on booster #4 to persuade me to start the potentially multi year course of treatment for a pandemic that may be mutating away from them or winding down.

My standard for 'this vaccine is safe enough' is 'more safe than the windrawn limerix vaccine', which was pulled in part due to a 1/25000 probability of cardiac issues, and in part due to lack of success in the market (I'd have taken it). I'd view something with a side effect profile as bad or worse than that as unacceptable to me. I believe that there is enough data suggesting that the side effect profile of most of these is at least that bad, and that the true safety state is obscured by rigid suppression of negative information in the western world. I know it isn't great, and assess that it's probably worse than it looks.

I have plenty of reasons which have strengthened my opinion that not getting one of the three available shots was the correct decision, though I have some doubts about my laziness about making the radvac.

All in all, I'm not expecting to change my opinion, or regret my decision. I fully expect governments to back off the mandates and for side effects to get just as much public attention as the cancers SV40 contamination of 1960s polio vaccines caused, meaning zero.

I'd love for someone to tell me why my reasoning sucks, I'll freely admit that I'm probably overly conservative about side effect risk, but for my demographic and lifestyle (I haven't caught any of the strains yet and don't expect to), I think that conservative approach makes sense.

Edit 2023: I am more, not less confident in my decision, I have not had covid symptoms or a positive rapid test at any point, and am not restricting my lifestyle in the least. I did not get any vaccine.

Edit April 2023: https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1648315659825160192 my choice was the correct one, the vaccine was not necessary for my situation.