I haven’t seen anyone in this thread saying that we should believe the official pronouncements of any government or scientific organization just because we haven’t personally seen people claim to have bad side effects from a vaccine. What some of us have said is that we don’t assume that a health problem reported after receiving a vaccine was caused by the vaccine. Showing a correlation between two events (they occur at around the same time) isn’t the same as showing that one event causes the other.
In addition to that, I don’t believe the CDC or the National Institutes of Health has been making statements about the vaccines and telling us to believe the statements because they are “official say-so.” They are backing up their recommendations with facts derived from the best scientific studies and clinical evidence they have at the time. I saw Dr. Fauci on television today trying to explain the evidence behind new recommendations from the CDC.
I apologize to anyone I offended by expressing my opinion, but if others’ opinions are to be respected, then mine should be also.
JaredM: can you point out the comment(s) you are referring to, suggesting that someone would ignore evidence of a causal connection between a vaccine and serious side-effects? I admit that I can’t find it.