perhaps it was because it was a fluid situation with a lot of moving pieces they were trying to juggle
That's pretty close to the problem. It's a huge chaotic system that is difficult to predict. It involves questions of economics, virology, statistics, leadership, and an understanding of human nature. Faucci et al had tunnel vision on their domain of epidemiology, but in the real world that expertise is pretty worthless if you don't understand the interactions with those other domains. This isn't just a case of they got unlucky and I got lucky, it's a matter of the wrong philosophy that they took to approaching a problem of predicting under massive uncertainty with disparate domains. Their own expertise blinded them to the possibility of being wrong, and their egos and incompetence of leadership made that problem even worse. These leaders just don't take the right approach to decision making under uncertainty and yet have the nerve to call you an idiot for calling them out on that mistake. They mentally just write you off as some uninformed conspiracy wacko. In fact, this is the very reason for the massively expanding cynicism and distrust of their authority.
i'd love to hear what side effects you expect to magically pop up so many months into trials.
Let's not start off with a strawman fallacy. It's good that you refer to these as trials, because the current rollout is in fact a trial and experiment, and health officials are once again being dishonest about that and overselling the safety. Notice a pattern here? The predictable result is that for anybody who thinks like I do, has paid attention to their words and actions, and sees their pattern of duplicitous conduct and horrible judgement will have alarm bells ringing.
The truth is these drugs are not FDA approved, and all the talk about how they "went through the same process but at a faster speed" for emergency authorization reveals a flaw in thinking. Suppose there are two drugs A and B where drug A is approved after 5 years of study and use while drug B is approved after 50 years of study and use. Statistically drug B is the safer choice even though they might have gone through the same approval process, had the same number of trial participants, and been examined by the same clinicians. Time has done "free" work for us on drug B by showing that over a longer time frame any issues that could have surfaced would have surfaced. We do not have that assurance for drug A. This is the kind of philosophical or statistical truth that the experts refuse to acknowledge even exists. These are the kinds methodological tunnel vision flaws in their thinking that I referred to earlier.
As another humorous way of expressing this point, consider this article which reveals the flawed approach how medical experts evaluate data and scenarios while ignoring any evidence that doesn't meet their declared standard of evidence. This is the WHO "no evidence of human transmission" scenario. See, this isn't just them getting unlucky and me getting lucky, it's their poor judgement realizing that in the real world their is evidence from other domains, and their restrictive world view of randomized controlled trials offers one kind of evidence but misses many opportunities where we actually can make better decisions earlier before waiting for the costly experiments to come in.
So imagine my position when I hear people call me a conspiracy theorist for pointing out these problems. It's a fact that these vaccines can't be as safe as other treatments that have been around for years. There are other points I could bring up about this rollout too, but nobody's paying me here, my rambling thoughts won't change any public policy, and this is getting quite long already, so let's focus on this longevity angle. It's a fact that these medicines haven't gone through the full FDA approval process. My position is actually strongly scientific, and the twitter idiots repeating these celebrity talking head experts on TV and telling us to "trust the experts" are espousing the anti-scientific worldview. I see all kinds of coercive tactics being discussed by these sociopath leaders to convince the "vaccine hesitant" of the errors of their ways. See, they see us as little kids that are just stupid and can't make decisions for ourselves. We get all kinds of idiotic incentive schemes with free donuts, free beer, and free tickets to baseball games for taking part in this huge clinical trial. Shouldn't that last sentence ring all kinds of alarm bells in your mind that shows our business, health, and scientific leaders are all comfortable getting cozy together pushing these kinds of programs because they think you're an idiot and they know what's best for you? Shouldn't our doctors instead be telling us that we shouldn't eat donuts and drink beer in exchange for taking medicine and focus on answering our questions in an honest conversation? Overall, this is just atrocious leadership that will backfire.
So answering your original point, will there be massive side effects? I couldn't tell you. We've seen some of these already with blood clotting, and it sounds like the science on that is still out and it isn't fully understood as we continue to roll this out to the general population at full speed and shame anybody who asks questions. Our leaders have shown tremendous willingness to use censorship and downplay anything that undermines their goals, so we can't trust the data of reported side effects since these are drastically underreported and now systematically ignored as not politically expedient. Noticing the pattern of dishonesty and failed leadership here?
Basically they need to be honest but they haven't for anything during this whole fiasco, so what will happen is people won't believe them and won't get the vaccine. Their worldview is too arrogant and dishonest, and that is why they are making these mistakes and throwing up their hands in the air and patting themselves on the back by saying well, it's all a fluid situation with a lot of moving pieces, so I think we're actually doing pretty well--so long as we can just fix the thinking of some of those idiot antivaxers. These experts are the root cause of why we have antimaskers and antivaxers. It's all so sadly predictable.
It's a fact that these vaccines can't be as safe as other treatments that have been around for years
that is mighty dubious. see the earlier death rates this caused as they used outmoded treatments on patients. i'm not sure what treatments you suggest are safer and still effective. i have read a fair bit though by no means the totality of knowledge. if there are any, i'd really love to hear it because it would be news to me.
its not the pointing out these problems that makes you a conspiracy nut, its the degree you will go to convince yourself that this is an everybody else problem and not a you problem that makes you a conspiracy nut. you have - without evidence or reason (apart from your own/others' theories) - come up with your own narrative for who these people are, what their motives are and why they are evil. and you are calling others sociopaths.
There have been a ton of alternative treatments suggested and studied--some appear promising with real clinical trials (or at least hospital use in treatment)--and some that are obviously snake oil peddled by wackos. The ones that at least appear to have some quality scientific study are things you might have heard of: zinc + vitamin D, hydrochloroquine, ivermectin.
I make no claims as to if any of these work and really haven't looked extensively into them because the signal to noise ratio is still really low, and there isn't a positive return on investment for me even if I could get to the truth on that. For now, the best move for me is to just focus on a healthy lifestyle and immune system. That pays dividends in general and should have been strongly encouraged back from March 2020 through the rest of 2020 when the medical community had fuck all treatment anyway. Imagine what the world would look like if our leaders suggested we spend time outside exercising, cooking and eating healthy meals at home, and losing weight last year instead of fear mongering and harassing people in the park. I'm not naive enough to believe everybody would magically lose weight, but it's the kind of policy that has zero health downsides and only positive upsides. It's what real leadership looks like that could be trusted because it is so blindingly truthful and free of ulterior agenda. It would improve all of our chances against covid and give us much better lives in general. You don't have to be a hippie to see the value in this approach. It's scientifically valid and backed with centuries of data and evidence. Why they didn't do this we can only imagine, but it really doesn't matter because it shows their decision making just doesn't have the right world view and philosophy to address this problem.
I prescribe very little to their motives. I think it's a matter that they are out of touch with how other humans think and prone to tunnelvision in their domain of study, but there are many true conspiracy-zone explanations. And some that just halfway touch--like they're sold-out to pharma interests--where it is certainly true, just a matter of degree. Not many people take absurd ones seriously though. I'd guess 99% of the vaccine/Faucci/mask skeptics don't believe the 5G nonsense, but that is the strawman canard argument always paraded out in conversations to try to discredit skeptics.
Why is this always the stupid shit we hear about? Interestingly, if you read about the history of conspiracy theories you'll find that that is a tactic the CIA came up with to discredit its opponents; that is not a conspiracy theory. But like my central thesis here, abusing this trick for control is backfiring as it pisses off more perfectly reasonable people who see the obscenity of being labeled a bunch of kooks and see that institutions are morally bankrupt. It's breaking the social contract that we live in a just, democratic society where our institutions are responsible, honest, and accountable. This is the same phenomena that lead to Trump getting elected, internet echochambers, and radicalisation. We're seeing a massive failure of leadership, and we've seen a continual erosion of our institutions over the last few decades, so it is logical that they wouldn't be up to the task of a crisis like this. It's my opinion that the best way to counteract all this is for us to stop playing along compliantly and demand better rather than just shrug and say I guess these leaders are the best we got. Our resistance will preserve liberty and force better behavior and accountability.
This isn't about just a mask, or just a temporary closure of restaurants, or just a vaccine. These leaders are using a crisis for their own agendas and will never walk back their new powers. We saw this with 9/11 just 20 years ago. The Faustian bargain to submit to them in return for ending the pandemic is fundamentally flawed and wishful thinking that will be abused.
probably for a multitude of reasons but probably not many of the ones your thinking. perhaps it was because it was a fluid situation with a lot of moving pieces they were trying to juggle. nobody bats 1.000, especially on something so enormous. expecting perfection is ridiculous.
as for vaccinnes, i'd love to hear what side effects you expect to magically pop up so many months into trials.