A study showing if people who wear masks get it isn't as helpful as knowing if they were able to spread it to others. This would be much harder to study in a large scale experiment. Your surgeon wears a mask not because they might get something from you during surgery, but to prevent infecting you while you're sitting with your guts out. And again, if I find out later me wearing a mask didn't prevent anyone from getting it from me, it's not the end of the world. It's something easy and painless we can all do now that may help someone else.
Sure, we don't know everything. We hardly ever do, but we have enough to make some informed decisions (or assumptions if you prefer). Everyone would prefer we have all the info before making decisions, but in most cases we can't know it all beforehand.
I'd love to know if the Barnes LRX will shoot well in my rifle without having to pay $35 to find out! I can read reviews and forum posts from others, but I won't know for sure until I've loaded it up and tried it.
The talk about the media suppressing everything feels like Boogeyman of a scapegoat for conspiracy peddling. A lack of negative responses doesn't mean they're being suppressed. A quick Google search yeilds more results than you'd expect if they were actually being suppressed. There are reports of side effects, both within the studies and outside of it. Some reports of anaphylaxis (right on the CDCs website!), maybe 2-3 per million. So I'm not seeing where this information is being hidden away.
We have a thread here on LRH with members posting their unfiltered experiences, positive and negative. It's a small sample size, but it isn't subject to any editor or other filters you may worry about elsewhere. Most side effects seem
minimal and much better than contracting the virus. There isn't going to be a headline everytime someone gets a rash at the injection site. Early on there were reports a nurse died after getting it, later proved to be false, but it was reported on.
What is most surprising to me is how political this has become. There's a pandemic that is bringing countries to their knees and through application of science we are able to develop and run clinical trials on vaccines within a year and a large portion of the population doesn't want it or doesn't think the pandemic is "that bad".
The numbers probably aren't perfect, nothing ever is. But theres ample evidence that this is pretty bad and it's worse because we aren't wholeheartedly fighting it. If there are unknown side effects, I'll have to deal with them later. Even with established treatments there will be unknowns or complications, but I wouldn't let that stop me from seeking treatment.
I'm younger than most here and likely would not die from the virus, but I'll happy get the vaccine first chance I get. As I said earlier, I'm continually shown by the customers and other people I see out in public that they don't care about giving the virus to me. If your eligible now and choose to wait too long you're going to be competing against very motivated people like myself to get a dose.