Let’s think about why the Covid-19 vaccines are still called “experimental.” It is clear that a switch to “approved” status would help many reluctant holdouts get vaccinated and that would be a good thing.
So why is the FDA dragging its feet? Why has the approval process for vaccines normally taken quite a few years? It isn’t my field of expertise, but I presume the reason is that there is concern unfortunate sequelae will show up after several years (or decades?) have passed.
Millions have taken the new-tech mRNA vaccines, but because of their newness nobody took them long enough ago to answer the question of long-term unintended consequences. And the people at FDA who declare approval are unwilling to get out ahead of the data and potentially be shown to be horribly wrong several years from now.
The other DrC and I took the vaccines knowing there could be nasty surprises lurking somewhere in the future. Why would we do this? Because we’re old and therefore two things were true: (a) the old are most at risk from Covid-19, and (b) we’re less likely to live long enough to experience “long term” consequences.
It is estimated something like 89% of the elderly have had the shots. From where we oldsters sit, surviving the corona virus and living a healthy 5-10 more years is our best bet. We aren’t going to have babies, we aren’t worrying about how we’ll fare 30 years from now. And we understand the cost-benefit equation looks different to the young who have to consider both of those eventualities.
