RE: As far as requiring people to get vaccinated or get fired, I really have no issue with that. People whose jobs require extensive contact with the public are most at risk of catching and spreading communicable diseases.
The only problem I have with that is the mRNA Covid vaccines were RUSHED, and side effects have not be thoroughly tested like other vaccines.
I the policy also ignores NATURALLY ACQUIRED IMMUNITY, which millions of unvaccinated people have acquired.
It also ignores the fact that the vaccines HAVE NOT PREVENTED infection. How many times, for instance, have both Joe and Jill Biden been vaccinated and boosted a yet, STILL got Covid?
There is no good comparison between the current Covid vaccines and the traditional vaccines that people like me have taken.
They were not rushed. The technology has been in development since the 1990s. Before the pandemic, prototype mRNA vaccines against Zika, Ebola, and influenza were developed and tested in animal models. Animal testing is a precursor to human testing.
As far as the safety profile of mRNA vaccines, it is similar to the safety profile of other vaccines. The side effects and adverse effects are similar to those experienced when taking other vaccines. Since all side and adverse effects following vaccination are mediated by the immune system (the vaccine actually doesn't do anything), it is unsurprising that the safety profile is similar.
The FDA is unbelievably stringent about drug safety. They require a ton of clinical testing and data analysis before they will consider approving a drug for market use. In the case of the Covid vaccines, President Trump's Operation Warp Speed initiative allowed certain red-tape blockades to be lifted. This means that clinical trials which previously had to be run sequentially could be run in parallel. Running the trials concurrently saved a lot of time. Each trial still had to be analyzed and the drugs still had to meet FDA safety criteria before the FDA would grant either the EUA or the full market approval.
I'm linking to the FDA page on the Pfizer vaccine: Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine. Contained in the links on that page are some extensive detailed documents describing the data that the FDA considered and the rationale for the FDA's decision to approve the Pfizer vaccine for market use. There is no indication that the FDA or Pfizer took any shortcuts with testing and analyzing this drug.
I the policy also ignores NATURALLY ACQUIRED IMMUNITY, which millions of unvaccinated people have acquired.
All immunity is naturally acquired. I think you are trying to refer to disease-induced immunity as opposed to vaccine-induced immunity.
The problem with disease-induced immunity is that it is a very dangerous method of provoking an immune response. Sure, millions of people have achieved short-term immunity as a result of catching Covid (immunity against coronaviruses typically lasts for a few months). But--not all Covid survivors get protective immunity as a result of infection. Some of them become immune to virus proteins other than the spike protein, meaning they have no protection against infection. And since the Covid virus can severely damage lymph nodes, they might not have an adaptive immune response at all.
Furthermore, nearly seven million people have now died from Covid. And millions more have experienced long-term health impairments as a result of Covid. That disease-induced immunity didn't work out so well for them. This raises the question, of course, of why you would be so adamant about becoming immune to Covid when your method of becoming immune is to catch it. What is the use of immunity, then?
It also ignores the fact that the vaccines HAVE NOT PREVENTED infection. How many times, for instance, have both Joe and Jill Biden been vaccinated and boosted a yet, STILL got Covid?
No vaccine can prevent 100% of infections in 100% of recipients. There are always breakthrough infections. Since the vaccine is a training aid for the immune system that actually does all the work, how much protection a person has after vaccination is directly related to how well their immune system works. And there are a lot of factors that can impact immune system function.
--As a person ages, their immune system function declines in a process called "senescence." This starts around age 65 and gets worse with increasing age.
--A person who has cancer might have impaired immune function as a result of either the cancer or the treatment.
--Organ recipients take immune suppressants which basically shut down their immune system. They have to depend on T-cells, B-cells, and antibodies already in their blood prior to taking the immune suppressants, because they aren't making any more.
--Some people are born with immune system impairments that cause them not to respond to vaccines. Their only protection against infectious disease is to not be exposed, ever.
Neither the Covid nor any other vaccine can restore immune system function. This is not what vaccines do.
As for the protection provided by Covid vaccines, I will share a personal anecdote. My husband, son, and I took a cruise a while back. We had to provide proof of full vaccination as well as evidence of a negative Covid test within 24 hours prior to boarding. We all stayed in the same cabin. The day before the cruise ended, we had to take another Covid test. Hubby and I were negative, but son--who vapes and had been around someone who was quite symptomatic on the smoking deck--came up positive. We were confined to our cabin until all of the other passengers had disembarked and ship personnel escorted us off the ship and turned us over to Canadian border patrol agents. Those agents did not look at our passports or have us go through any sort of customs, meaning that we technically entered Canada illegally. The border patrol arranged for a taxi to take us to a hotel for quarantine, where we all stayed in the same room. We ended up staying there for a week because even though Canada required a two-week quarantine, our home state of Texas only required a one week quarantine (the TX department of health called and informed my son of this fact). We ended up renting a car and driving across the border so that we could get a flight back home. The American border patrol agent had a lot more questions for us than their Canadian counterparts did.
During this time, in which we spent 8 days cooped up in the same room as a diagnosed and symptomatic Covid patient, my husband and I never caught Covid. And the disease my son had was mild, causing only a few days of sniffles.
The purpose of Covid vaccines (like all vaccines) is to train your immune system so that it will go into fighting mode immediately upon exposure to the pathogen. If this does not prevent an infection, it can kill the infection before you even know you were exposed. Or you might still get a very mild short-lasting infection, since your immune system had a head start in fighting it. Vaccination reduces the likelihood of serious disease, hospitalization, and death. It works.