As I understand it, a lot of the work on these vaccines was done before the pandemic even hit, because of the similarity to previous viruses and the work done on those vaccines.
Also, there simply are no long-term side effects to vaccines, as a rule. Going back at least as far as the polio vaccine (1960s), any side effects make themselves known within six to eight weeks.
Also, the study of mRNA vaccines has been going on for decades. These vaccines are not mysteries, they are very well known and well researched.
No long-term side effects. That's not a thing. It's a straw man scare tactic propagated by people who are already against the vaccine.
- Research on this technology has existed for decades, but the technology to make it actually work has only gotten to a state where it's practical over the last ~10 years. This article shows the progression of the delivery methods and approvals for them having changed and updated even up to 2019 -
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-021-00358-0 . This article (made in 2019) also notes a couple times that extensive human trials had not been performed -
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.00594/full - Saying there are no long-term effects of vaccines, in a historical sense, has no bearing here. Focusing on the mRNA vaccines specifically, while the technology has existed for decades, the COVID shots are the first mass released mRNA product. They are a new technology, not a crippled version of a virus or some other stand-in organism
- As the technology is new, based on recent developments, and has not had extensive long-term testing, they cannot be characterized as well-known and well-researched
- Think of how often unknown side-effects and causes are found. Asbestos, BPAs, Monsanto products causing cancer. Look at the FDA going back and re-evaluating if chemical sunscreen products, which definitely shouldn't be causing cancer, might in fact be causing cancer. The new major Java code bug has lurked for almost 10 years without being discovered. Whenever some horrible long-term or hidden effect in something is found, the story is necessarily that "well we tested it thoroughly and thought it was safe!"
- It is literally impossible to know if long term side-effects are "not a thing" because it is impossible for the long-term side-effects to have been tested and measured
- Do I think there are long-term side-effects? Not exactly. If you get a long-term side effect like bells palsy, that should show up quickly. My understanding is that the various components of the shot flush out of your body in about a week. It does not make sense that something that leaves your body in a week can lurk and mysteriously come up later
- But again, when these unexpected problems come up, they are... unexpected. I know not why caution/concern about this should be characterized as a fake argument produced by motivated reasoning