PP: The mRNA vaccines have been endlessly billed as “Safe & Effective.” But are they?
A lot depends on what one means by “safe” (which is always a relative term, as nothing is ever perfectly safe) and what the definition of “effective” is.
By effective, I think we can all agree that a vaccine designed to be mass adopted in the midst of a pandemic ought to reduce deaths from the pandemic disease. That means it ought to reduce overall mortality.
Hopefully, we can agree that’s the right metric, because if a vaccine reduces some deaths in this part of the equation, but induces a similar amount of deaths over in some other part of the health equation, then it’s not actually being "effective" in terms of reducing mortality.








