Some people claim that the vaccine is perfectly safe. Some people claim that the vaccine is incredibly dangerous. My opinion is, as with just about all things in life, the truth falls in between those two extremes. And, in this case, I think it's probably close to the safer end of things for most people.
The vaccine is not absolutely, perfectly, 100% safe for every single person, and I can't imagine any responsible scientist or doctor is making such a claim. A small number of people are having adverse reactions to the vaccine, and that is a fact.
But that's to be expected. In medicine, absolutely
nothing is 100% risk-free: not common over-the-counter medications, not herbal remedies...there are even people who have negative reactions to the adhesive in band-aids!
So the calculus everybody has to do is figure out for themselves, with this as with any other vaccine or medical treatment, whether the benefits outweigh the potential risks. And this is harder if you're in a category that might make you more susceptible to the risk of an adverse reaction from a vaccine, like so many of us are. On the other hand, if you're in such a category then you might possibly be at higher risk for more severe disease if you choose not to be vaccinated. There is no perfect choice, which is why each of us is trying so hard to measure whether the good outweighs the bad.
So based on those CDC numbers so far, 2% of people are experiencing moderate-severe adverse side effects. This is not insignificant, but I imagine that it is similar to the numbers we might see from other vaccines. And although some of these side effects may have indeed been severe, some of these people could simply be those who got fevers and didn't feel well enough to go to work the next day, but were fine a few days later.
Some people might consider a 2% risk of moderate-severe adverse side effects to be perfectly reasonable in exchange for protection from covid, while others might see it as too high of a risk to take for themselves.
Historically, this makes me think of
efforts to inoculate people against smallpox during an outbreak in Boston in 1721. Inoculation was not pleasant--it involved pricking the patient's skin with a needle that had been dipped in the the pus from smallpox sores. And it was terribly risky by today's standards. The people who underwent this procedure became ill for weeks or even months. And records of a small sample of those inoculated in 1721 showed that 2% of people died from the inoculation. It's amazing to think that people would choose to undergo inoculation knowing that there was a chance they would not survive. But people judged the risk to be worth it since the risk of smallpox to their own health as well the health of their community was so great: during this 1721 outbreak, 14% of people who were not inoculated died after contracting smallpox, and many of those who survived (like today's long-haulers) continued to suffer from long-term health problems.
(just to explain why I went on this tangent: back in 4th grade I did a report on Dr. Zebdiel Boylston, the doctor who performed these inoculations, because he had lived in my hometown and was a bit of a local hero...I guess the story stuck with me!)
So, like the Bostonians of 1721, we have a tough decision to make. Getting a vaccine isn't 100% risk free. But
not getting a vaccine also isn't 100% risk free, both for ourselves and for the people in our communities. At least our vaccines are significantly safer than the inoculations from a few centuries ago.