Except when it's not, which is the problem. Adding social pressure doesn't fix the trust issues, it makes them worse.

Half my friends and family are in the medical field, which isn't to say my position is magically correct, but that I'm not exactly ignorant of how things actually work either. To be more precise, I'm not a "but muh mercuryz!" clown or a "Fire doesn't melt steel!" loon.

I have zero problem with "Shit was hitting the fan, so we had to make something work," but I do have problems with people who will never pay the price for their decisions that also inherenty have conflicts of interest and a long history of corruption along with poor decision-making (ie. Politicians) claiming exigent circumstances to justify telling me I can't make my own choices. I spent a quarter of my life in the military, another good chunk working for the government in some form or fashion before becoming a physicist, and I grew up in a state with a reputation for corruption and government overeach. My distrust doesn't come from ignorance, it's based in decades of personal experience.

Hell, I hope mRNA tech takes off and it proves out, precisely because of the things it makes possible, but I'm also perfectly fine waiting for the kinks to get ironed out. The FDA has a pretty long track record of coming back 5-15 years later with, "So that thing we said was safe? Yeah, uh, sorry about that..."

I don't know about you, but I was in the military long enough ago to remember the initial anthrax vaccines that were still being developed when they were made mandatory.

It's one thing to be reluctant about something because of ignorance and/or simply not knowing WTF you're talking about, but it's quite a bit different when someone has a track record for shifty/shady shit.

To be fair, 5-6 isn't unreasonable either.

And I didn't say you were wrong, only more generous than I would be... So?

That's rather generous. I expect that sort of behavior out of 7-8 year olds.

You'd think posts like this would hurt less when my wife has been a hospice nurse for the last decade, but it doesn't, not when losing my parents is one of the few things that truly worries me. I hope you make it through this with as little anguish and as few long-term problems as possible, OP. It certainly won't be easy.