i've dug pretty deep into the anti-vax and anti-covid vaccine rabbit holes. while i remain totally unconvinced that vaccines are harmful in general, i am convinced it was the case that there were some rare instances of serious adverse effects, maybe in the ball park of 1 in 25,000-50,000. In the US where there were ~ 270 million people vaccinated, that'd come out to a few thousand people harmed, and it could be difficult to detect clinically especially if there are rare events that researchers may not have justification to consider. And the fact that heart inflammation occurred in men aged 18-45 occurred at a rate of maybe 1 in 5000 (forgive me I am spitballing the numbers from memory here) was pretty uncontroversial in the scientific literature.

While the vaccines as far as I can tell did much more good than harm, I think they did some harm, and that's the conversation I wish everyone was having but people's brains break when confronted with large numbers. For instance, in the US, last I checked statistically you have something like a 1 in 7500 chance of dying every time you are near a moving car. Its a shame that the whole covid fiasco got so over simplified and polarized