COVID Vaccines: is the cure is worse than the disease (these days)?

I don’t get COVID vaccines anymore. I did the first round while we were still in lockdown.

I stand by the choice to get vaccinated then. We didn’t know what was happening, lots of people were dying, good statistics were hard to come by (good interpretations even harder), and the virus hadn’t mutated yet.

It wasn’t great for me: two shots separated by a month; 5.5 days after the first I got shingles (apparently thousands of other people also got at that exact time) and then after the 2nd I was sicker than I’ve almost ever been. It lasted about 2.5 days and then was VOOM instantly cleared up. It was weird and felt unnatural. But perhaps when I later got COVID, it would have been WAY worse, without having gotten the vaccine.

Now, I don’t believe it’s worth it. The experience of having COVID is way less. It’s less deadly. There’s not a chance of herd immunity. And I’ve got friends who have awful long COVID from the vaccine. I haven’t done all the research, and anyone who’s tried to tell me about the research has seemed stilted to one side or another that had me take their interpretations with a huge grain of salt.