Anti-Vax ignoramuses ... ( trying to ruin the US economy )

This is a good one. Sam Harris podcast with Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.

A Contagion of Bad Ideas: A Conversation with Eric Topol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jQfNzk_CFk
Eric Topol is a great source for solid, up to date honest information on Covid-19 and the pandemic ... and the vaccine as well. I'd strongly recommend anyone to listen to this podcast and see if it makes sense to you.

Three things I keep hearing from the vaccine averse is that the vaccines have not been authorized by the FDA for use, and that the side-effects, first, but not the long-term term side-effects of the vaccine are not know and finally the mis-interpretation of the VAERS ( Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System ) database.

1. FDA authorization:
This is an understandable and a reasonable point. I have wondered why the FDA is dragging its feet on this myself. Personally, for me, I know enough of the facts from millions of people getting vaccinated and almost none of them are getting Covid-19 or having side-effects. This is talked about around T=22m50s. The reality of the vaccinated population has given so much data that, for the mRNA vaccines these are the safest and most effective vaccines in history, so the FDA ought to get off its butt. The FDA bar is set at 50% target efficiency - so it is quite weird that they are dragging their feet.

2. Long-term Side-Effects:
Topol states quite clearly that never in the history of vaccines has any vaccine been shown to have any lasting, long-term side-effects past the 2 month point.

3. VAERS:
Just know that in the supervised trials where patients were closely studied after getting vaccinated - none of them had any adverse reactions. But, there are some possible problems that they are watching - with the J&J vaccine, not with the mRNA vaccines.

It is also sad that some Vaccine-hesitant people are taking advice from people who are lying to them, specifically Republican spokespeople who are getting vaccinated themselves but implying that the vaccines are dangerous.

Again, the mRNA vaccines are 90-95% infections. At the worst they are 88-90% effective against the Delta variant and 96% effective against death or serious illness. If vaccinated people do happen to be exposed to a large viral load the disease is virtually never serious or fatal.