Vaccines can be scary. You’re asking healthy people to roll up their sleeves and take a shot of something mysterious — something associated with deadly germs. For Covid-19 vaccines, such fears may be amplified by concern that development was rushed, and by the way everything associated with the pandemic has been politicized. It will be hard to garner the public trust needed for a pandemic-ending vaccination campaign.
The clinical trials required by the FDA can’t prove any vaccine is perfectly safe, but what we’ve learned through these trials should be reassuring. You can’t get the disease from these vaccines, and the risks associated with them are tiny compared to risks associated with getting Covid-19. The risks are also tiny compared to the economic insecurity, lost education and deep isolation brought on by the pandemic and our interventions to try to stop it.
