1 year ago, the medical establishment was saying that it's impossible to develop a vaccine for a new virus in just a year, so don't even think about seeing a vaccine anytime soon... leading people with halfway-decent memories scratching their heads about how the heck this vaccine was actually developed and getting really suspicious when it doesn't behave like a vaccine at all in that it doesn't prevent you from getting or spreading the disease. And has rare but serious side effects.
> how the heck this vaccine was actually developed
mRNA vaccines for coronaviruses have been in progress since the 70s. This just happens to be when they finally got to the point of being production-ready. It's a useful coincidence, but without it mRNA vaccines for coronaviruses would have been showing up in the near future anyway (at a slower rate without all the emergency COVID funding).
> doesn't behave like a vaccine at all
Sterilizing immunity isn't an inherent property of vaccines.
> And has rare but serious side effects.
All vaccines do that, and as with all widely-used vaccines the rate of side effects is much, much lower than the rate of side effects from the actual disease.
